What's New in Bazaar 2.1?
=========================

This document outlines the major improvements in Bazaar 2.1
vs Bazaar 2.0. As well as summarizing improvements made to
the core product, it highlights enhancements within the broader
Bazaar world of potential interest to those upgrading.

Bazaar 2.1.0 marks the start of our second long-term-stable series.
This series will be supported with bug fixes for the next 12 months.
All users are encouraged to upgrade from the 2.0.x stable series.


Better efficiency
-----------------

Many operations now consume less memory. Several operations are
also faster including branching, logging merged revisions and
upgrading from pre-2a to 2a format.


New command options
-------------------

Several commands have new options. These include:

===========     ==============  ======================================
Command         Option            Description
===========     ==============  ======================================
branch          bind            Bind to the source location
commit          commit-time     Give an explicit commit timestamp
switch          revision        Switch to a particular revision
unshelve        keep            Apply changes but don't delete them
unshelve        preview         Show the diff that would result from
                                unshelving
update          revision        Update to a particular revision
===========     ==============  ======================================

Other command improvements include:

* A :doc:`../user-reference/shelve-help` editor can be defined to provide shelf functionality at
  a granularity finer than per-patch hunk.

* :doc:`../user-reference/send-help` send now supports the OS X Mail application.

See the help for the commands above for further details.


Per-file merge hooks
--------------------

Hooks can now be defined for smart merging of selected file types.
This enables easier merging of ChangeLogs, Release Notes and other
file that frequently conflict.


DWIM revision identifiers
-------------------------

Revision identifiers can now be given in a *Do-What-I-Mean* style.
For example, you can now just give a tag (instead of saying ``tag:xxx``)
or just say ``today`` (instead of saying ``date:today``). Prefixes
are now only required if the revision spec could be ambiguous.

Launchpad compatibility
-----------------------

Launchpad has `announced
<http://blog.launchpad.net/general/edge-is-deprecated>`_ that the
``edge.launchpad.net`` instance is deprecated and may be shut down in the
future . Bazaar has therefore been updated in this release to talk to the main
(``launchpad.net``) servers, rather than the ``edge`` ones (the same code is
running on both servers during the interim).


New ignore patterns
-------------------

Patterns prefixed with ``!`` are exceptions to ignore patterns and
take precedence over regular ignores. Such exceptions are used to
specify files that should be versioned which would otherwise be
ignored. Patterns prefixed with ``!!`` act as regular ignore patterns,
but have highest precedence, even over the ``!`` exception patterns. 


Smart server home directory support
-----------------------------------

``bzr+ssh`` and ``bzr`` paths can now be relative to home directories
specified in the URL.  Paths starting with a path segment of ``~`` are
relative to the home directory of the user running the server, and paths
starting with ``~user`` are relative to the home directory of the named
user.  For example, for a user "bob" with a home directory of
``/home/bob``, these URLs are all equivalent:

* ``bzr+ssh://bob@host/~/repo``
* ``bzr+ssh://bob@host/~bob/repo``
* ``bzr+ssh://bob@host/home/bob/repo``

If ``bzr serve`` was invoked with a ``--directory`` argument, then no
home directories outside that directory will be accessible via this
method.

This is a feature of ``bzr serve``, so pre-2.1 clients will
automatically benefit from this feature when ``bzr`` on the server is
upgraded.


Generalized glob support on Windows
-----------------------------------

On Windows, glob expansion is now handled in a universal way across
all commands. In previous versions, it was explicitly handed by just
a few commands, e.g. ``add``. A side effect of this change is that
patterns now need to be quoted when passed to the ``ignore`` command,
e.g. ``bzr ignore *.foo`` now needs to be given as ``bzr ignore "*.foo"``.


Improved Git and Mercurial interoperability
-------------------------------------------

Many improvements have been made to the git_ and hg_ plugins.
With these plugins installed, most Git and Mercurial repositories
can now be read by standard Bazaar clients. Changes can also
be written back via the dpush command.

.. _git: http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/plugins/en/git-plugin.html
.. _hg: http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/plugins/en/hg-plugin.html


Metaprojects
------------

New plugins are available for constructing larger projects
from smaller ones. These include:

* builder_ - construction of a branch using recipes
* externals_ - Subversion-style external branches

.. note::

   The builder plugin has been designed to complement the builddeb_
   plugin to streamline Debian source package management. It may also
   be useful for building test images for a QA team or disk images
   for installers, say.

.. _builder: http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/plugins/en/builder-plugin.html
.. _externals: http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/plugins/en/externals-plugin.html
.. _builddeb: http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/plugins/en/builddeb-plugin.html


Colocated branch workspaces
---------------------------

A colocated workspace is one where a single working tree is used
across one or more branches managed at that same location. This
is now supported by the new colo_ plugin and by Bazaar Explorer.

.. _colo: http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/plugins/en/colo-plugin.html


Better documentation
--------------------

A :doc:`../admin-guide/index` covering topics such as setting up servers,
security, backups and email integration has been added.

A large number of documentation bugs have been fixed, clarifying
numerous issues and filling in some missing holes.

The :doc:`../user-reference/index`
has been organized into topics making it easier to
navigate through and print selected sections of.

To assist users migrating from other tools, a
`Survival Guide <http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/migration/en/survival/index.html>`_
has been published explaining Bazaar to users of other tools in terms they
already know. Sections are provided for existing users of 
CVS, Subversion, ClearCase, Perforce, Visual SourceSafe, Git, Mercurial,
Darcs and Monotone.

Selected documents have also been translated to Japanese.


Enhanced GUI clients
--------------------

Numerous enhancements have been made to most of our GUIs including
Bazaar Explorer, TortoiseBZR and the QBzr-Eclipse add-on. These
applications all build on top of improvements made to QBzr. Bzr-gtk
has also been improved.

Bazaar Explorer has over a dozen new features including smart toolbars,
support for all bzr commands (including those in plugins),
a better working tree browser and a submit delta report showing the
cumulative effect of a series of commits.
See `What's New in Bazaar Explorer 1.0?
<http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/explorer/en/whats-new/whats-new-in-1.0.html>`_
for more information.


Further information
-------------------

For more detailed information on the changes made, be sure to check
the :doc:`../release-notes/index` for:

* the interim bzr `milestones <https://launchpad.net/bzr/2.1>`_
* the plugins you use.

Enjoy,
The Bazaar Development Team
