Version control on shared web host with Bazaar

Question

I have a project I am going to begin co-developing on one of my web servers. Due to the nature of this kind of thing I'd like to have some version control going on. I've been searching all day for something that fits my needs and Bazaar seems the way to go, but I cannot figure out how to configure it.

My web host is Linux, without SSH (or SFTP as far as I can tell). I've read that you can use Bazaar in this situation to make a "dumb" server, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to configure, or find a guide. Everything out there requires either SSH/CLI access (both of which I don't have) or are too vague to follow. I am using the Windows GUI for Bazaar as well.

Can anyone either point me to a guide/instructions on how to do it, or post one here?

Edit Since Original Post

I have been trying to do several things since my original post. It might be that I am misunderstanding how bazaar is meant to work. What I want is to have my php files etc. on my web host (to which i do not have ssh access) so that myself and codevelopers can edit and test files without overwritting each other.

I initially tried to "start a new project" on my server via "ftp://user:pass@server" and it says that is successful. Then it prompts with a "Unable to open location" error saying "C:/ftp:/user:pass@server is not a brand, checkout, or repository. Do you want to open it as a virtual repository, searching for nested locations?"

When I hit yes, it gives me an error "Unable to change to C:/ftp:/user:pass@server - closing page."

if I do the same thing with the "Open an existing location" option, it gives me the same error, except afterwards the Bazaar GUI hangs with "Not Responding" and needs to be killed.

Either way nothing is created that I can then interact with in Bazaar. If I create a local project and then push, it all seems to work. However, if I try to commit changes so I can push them I get an error "Bazaar has encountered an environmental error. Please report a bug if this is not the result of a local problem at https://bugs.launchpad.net/qbzr/+filebug including this traceback, and a description of what you were doing when the error occurred." the show details says "bzr: ERROR: Unable to determine your name. Please, set your name with the 'whoami' command. E.g. bzr whoami "Your Name ""

Answer 1

Before you can commit revisions, you need to set a name and email address. These are important metadata in a commit. You can set these in the Settings | Configuration | User Configuration menu. On the General tab enter the Name and E-mail fields. It's recommended to use real data in public projects, so that others who view your project can contact you in case they have questions. But it doesn't have to be real. This is a one-time initial setup.

As a next step, I would do a test to make sure you can really use your server over FTP, as a sanity check:

1. Commit a few revisions in your local repository, just so that you have something to push. It could be anything, doesn't matter.
2. Try a push to a URL in the format: ftp://user:pass@server/absolute/path/to/somewhere. In the example in your post you wrote ftp://user:pass@server, but it's important to have an absolute path there, like in this example.

If for some reason the push doesn't work well using the GUI, try it on the command line, for example:

bzr push ftp://user:pass@server/absolute/path/to/somewhere

This should really give an error message we can debug. In that case, paste the output into your question.

UPDATE

You said in comments that something was wrong with your name+email setting, and changing that resolved the problem. It would be nice to know what exactly was the problem there.

About bzr push to an FTP server, I double checked, this will never create the files on the server. From bzr push -h:

The target branch will not have its working tree populated because this is both expensive, and is not supported on remote file systems.

Some smart servers or protocols may put the working tree in place in the future.

Over FTP it's a "dumb" server, so it definitely won't put the files there, only the .bzr directory, which is the repository and branch data. If you want to have the files there, I'm afraid you have to copy manually. There is a related bzr-push-and-update plugin, but it requires ssh access, which is not your case.