Why use a version control software ?

Yes why ? After all I can always do my backups myself. That way I don't have to learn a new software.

A week of hard work can save you an hour of thinking !

• Have you looked at a directory in which someone has been working for a long time, making backups of the different versions of the files. Either that person is very well organized, or it is likely to be polluted with backup files. Suppose the names of the backups are not obvious ? How do you share your work now ?
• Making backups by hand takes time, therefor you will less prone to make backups.
• Using an utility like bazaar gives you nice features like the ability to track changes made to a file or a set of files, to display the difference between different versions of files (very useful when you are hunting bugs, or sharing your work with others).
• Using an utility like bazaar helps sharing you work, as you can give your work to colleagues, and when they hand it back bazaar finds out by itself what has been modified and helps you merge it back into your own work.

Working on long projects without a version control software is like driving without a seatbelt, you probably will be all right.

For physicist this would be like working in the lab without a lab book. Eeek ! Well think about working on a computer without somethings that takes proper track of your changes.

Why bazaar ?

First of all, bazaar does work under windows, but it is not as well integrated as TortoiseSVN so if you are planning to work under windows I suggest you have a look at my SVN page.

Bazaar is a distributed version control software. This means there is no central server. This makes working with bazaar much lighter compared to other version control software.

Bazaar is oriented towards usability. It has a nice front-end ( olive ). It will soon be integrated in nautilus, the file explorer used by default under most linux distributions.

Using bazaar

Installing bazaar should be like installing any other software with your linux distribution : search the package index for bazaar and install it with all the components you are interested in.

It is late, and I want to go home. I am not going to write a tutorial on how to use bazaar, but there are already some very good ones :

• a quick start guide this gets you reading to do some work with bazaar in 5 minutes.
• a good tutorial that will allow you to get a full grasp of bazaar

I hope you will jump in on bazaar !