To enforce the flow of work, the bk level command is used to set the level of a repository. Setting the level of a repository tells BitKeeper whether or not to allow changes into that repository from another repository with a different level. A repository with no level setting defaults to level 1. The level is automatically set when a repository is cloned to the level of the parent repository.

If the level of repository A is lower than the level of repository B, work may flow from A into B, but not from B into A. If the level of repository A is equal to the level of repository B, work may flow in both directions from A to B and B to A.

In the example above, the level for stable-1.0 is N. The stable-1.0 repository was cloned to bugfixes-1.0 which takes on the level of its parent which is N. The level of dev-1.1, however, should be manually set to N+1 after it has been cloned from stable-1.0 to prevent new development work back flowing to stable-1.0 or bugfixes-1.0.

To check the level of a repository:

cd repository bk level

To set the level of a repository:

cd repository bk level num