Re: mtimes of working files

On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 16:18 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:

This is true. I already mirror a bunch of CVS and SVN repositories into git so that I can use them without too much pain¹, and I can do the same for git trees which use branches too; mirroring them into a bunch of separate trees for easy access.

On the occasions I actually try to _use_ branches, I find it very suboptimal. Perhaps it's just because I'm stupid. I'm sure that's why I ended up committing changes to the wrong branch. But having to rebuild (even with ccache) after changing branches is a PITA. Just changing branches at all is a PITA if you have uncommitted changes (which I usually do because I've usually tested _some_ random patch in a build tree for the hardware which is closest to hand). Pulling a whole bunch of unwanted changes on the 'development' branch while on GPRS, when all I really needed was a single commit from the 'stable' branch also didn't amuse me, although I'm sure if I had the time to play with it I'd have been able to avoid that.

I can, and do, mirror stuff from all kinds of suboptimal version control systems into single-branch git trees. And I include multi-branched git trees in my definition of 'suboptimal'. My ability to do that doesn't really help the newbies who are expected with branches, though.

I just wish people would make stuff available on the _servers_ in separate trees rather than in branches -- if some people prefer branches locally then that's their option; at the moment we kind of force people into it. They _could_ avoid it but they'd have to know what they're doing.

But I didn't really mean to start an argument; it's just my opinion.