Re: [PATCH 0/8] git-repack --max-pack-size

From: Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail.com>
Date: May 1, 2007, 09:36 UTC
Message-ID: <200705011037.03213.andyparkins@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7virbc7vue.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Tuesday 2007 May 01, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> But I was not talking about changing describe output because of
> the above argument.  What I was wondering was that it might be a
> good idea to loosen the promise of never rewinding 'next'.  It
> might be easier to view the history of 'next' during development
> for each cycle, if it started afresh after a feature release.

This is an interesting philosophy-of-version-control question. If two identical trees fall in the forest and there is no one there to diff them, was a release made? :-)

It's been my experience that failed attempts and dead-end branches are often of equal value to the successful branches. It's very handy when someone asks "why can't we do it like this", to be able to answer "look at revision xyz onwards". Even just for your own reference, I've often looked back on abandoned paths and thought "that wasn't as bad as I thought, I just need to fix it here and here" - if I'd discarded that work it would be gone forever.

It's certainly true in academia, a large part of my doctoral thesis was about "things that don't work" :-) Documenting failure is as important as documenting success.

Andy

-- 
Dr Andy Parkins, M Eng (hons), MIET
andyparkins@gmail.com