Re: branch description

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>
>  > Brian Gernhardt <benji@silverinsanity.com> writes:
>  >
>  >> On Apr 15, 2008, at 1:31 PM, Russ Dill wrote:
>  >>
>  >>> The problem is that a branch is just a floating name for a line of
>  >>> development. Its not really a "thing" in the repository like a tag or
>  >>> a commit. You'd need to make some sort of special tag that describes
>  >>> the branch or somesuch.
>  >>
>  >> No special tags needed.  A simple file that I'll call .git/info/
>  >> ref_names could be a set of lines that have "<ref>\t<description>",
>  >> like the following:
>  >>
>  >> refs/heads/master    Collection point for all my work
>  >> refs/heads/ref_names Add descriptions for branches
>  >> refs/heads/segfault  Trying to fix bug #12345
>  [...]
>
> >> Now if you want to propagate these descriptions when you push and
>  >> pull, things get a lot more complicated.
>  >
>  > Not complicated at all.  Put that description in-tree in a known location
>  > (say, "help-branch") in-tree and your propagation problem is solved.
>  >
>  > And have a scriptlet in $HOME/bin/git-help-branch to grep from that file.
>
>  Please, let's don't repeat Mercurial mistake of placing unversioned
>  information (such as branch names in case of Mercurial, or branches
>  descriptions in this case) in-tree, i.e. version it.  Think of what
>  would happen if you reset to the state (or checkout to some branch
>  with the state) which is before some branch was created, or before
>  some branch got description.  Mercurial deals with this using
>  "special" not lika in-tree treatment of such a file... I don't think
>  it is a good idea.
>
>  I think it wouldb be better to put branches descriptions somewhere
>  outside object repository, be it .git/info/ref_names of .git/config.