Re: What are branches?

From: Björn Steinbrink <b.steinbrink@gmx.de>
Date: Apr 20, 2009, 20:23 UTC
Message-ID: <20090420202329.GB17241@atjola.homenet>
In-Reply-To: <m3ab6bp2we.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

On 2009.04.20 11:59:38 -0700, Jakub Narebski wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Björn Steinbrink <B.Steinbrink@gmx.de> writes:
> 
> > If you go out, and look at a tree lit-up by the evil daystar, branches
> > start at the trunk and end at their tip. The trunk isn't part of the
> > branch.  [...]
> 
> Well, you have to remember that the 'branch' metaphor should not be
> taken too literaly; take for example merges which do not have
> equivalent in a tree build.

True, but that just happened to fit the task-oriented branch view so well, and I wanted the reference to the evil daystar (obviously ;-)).

> But if we are talking about literal branches: take a closer loog at
> the tip of tree (plant) branch.  You can find growong tip there
> (apical meristem) where new cells grow.  In Git you have 'branches'
> (branch heads) where you create new commits...

Yeah, see the end of my mail, where I said that git has a mechanism to control where branches grow. Seems to fit :-)

> But I agree that there isn't for example true notion of 'trunk' in
> git, and this is what allows Git to be truly distributed...

Hm, not just no trunk, but also no branches that have a starting point and an end point. In general, you can't say "My branch starts _here_" unless you use the root commit(s) as the starting point, or you apply "extra" knowledge (you know from which other branch this branch forked).

Björn