diff should warn if tree is out of date with branch

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Ioannis Ramfos wrote:
> However, when entering a "bzr diff" on the remote machine (before a "bzr
> update"), there is no output.

This is by design. The diff is always against the working tree, not the
branch.

Aaron
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I understand that "bzr diff" with no options gives the differences between the tip of the branch and the working tree. As after the "bzr push" the working tree is not updated (until a "bzr update"), I would expect "bzr diff" to reflect the differences between the working tree and the tip of the branch, as the files have remained on a previous version (the one before the push).

Is there any way that the working tree refers to something else then the current state of the files in the project directory?

Actually, "bzr diff" is against the checkout's revision, not the branch's tip. That is, there are multiple parts involved:

 * the branch, which has a tip
 * the checkout, which has a branch and is "at" some revision of that branch (not necessarily the tip)
 * the files on disk, i.e. the contents of the working tree.

"bzr diff" gives you the difference between the working tree and the checkout. A different command, "bzr update", will update a checkout to the current branch tip.

It might be nice if "bzr diff" to warn if the checkout is out-of-date w.r.t. the branch tip, but that would probably be too expensive in many situations. At the moment, "bzr diff" in a heavyweight checkout is a purely local operation, but if it has to check the remote branch (which may be several seconds of SSH connection setup away) it will become much slower just in case it should emit a warning. On the other hand, "bzr status" already does this check.

I think you can also force diff to compare against the branch with "bzr diff -r branch:".

So probably this bug should be marked Invalid or Won't Fix. But maybe there's a way we can make this situation clearer.