git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: git branch --edit-description a custom file

From
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date
Oct 31, 2019, 06:18 UTC
Message-ID
<20191031061832.GA20830@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To
<20191030224328.GB44961@generichostname>
On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 03:43:28PM -0700, Denton Liu wrote:
Show 8 quoted lines
> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 04:28:35PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
> Dscho brought up in the GGG thread[1] that perhaps we want to treat
> branch descriptions like notes and have them all under something like
> `refs/notes/branches`. This would certainly solve my problem of
> having versioned descriptions and it would probably do it in a much more
> general way than having a versioned included config.
> 
> Anyone see any potential problems with this approach?

I don't think it would be `refs/notes/`, as that is assumed to contain mappings of object ids (and if I understand correctly, this would be a mapping of branch names to data.

You could just have "refs/meta/descriptions/foo" pointing to a blob which contains the description of "refs/heads/foo". That makes it easy to edit descriptions, even if you don't like using "git branch --edit-description".

You could also have "refs/meta/descriptions" to point to a _single_ blob with all of the descriptions. It could even be in the existing config format. And then you could include it with "[include] blob = ...". That doesn't exist yet, but it would be easy to add (it was something I had always considered when writing the config-include code, but there was never really a good use; and you do have to be careful about pointing to untrusted blobs). That's a convoluted way to get where you want, but I wonder if integrating to the existing config system would have any benefits. I haven't really thought it through.

(Of course that's also only one step away from having a versioned config file in your .git directory, but it might possibly be a bit easier to manage, since it would always be committed).

That's mostly off-the-top-of-my-head rambling, so please disregard anything that seems totally off-base. :)

-Peff
Previous: Denton LiuNext: Johannes Schindelin
Message 4 of 21 in “git branch --edit-description a custom file”
  1. Denton LiuOct 30, 2019
  2. Jeff KingOct 30, 2019
  3. Denton LiuOct 30, 2019
  4. Jeff KingOct 31, 2019
  5. Johannes SchindelinOct 31, 2019
  6. Phillip WoodOct 31, 2019
  7. Johannes SchindelinOct 31, 2019
  8. Philip OakleyOct 31, 2019
  9. Jeff KingOct 31, 2019
  10. Philip OakleyNov 3, 2019
  11. Jeff KingNov 4, 2019
  12. Junio C HamanoNov 4, 2019
  13. Denton LiuOct 31, 2019
  14. Phillip WoodOct 31, 2019
  15. Jeff KingOct 31, 2019
  16. Phillip WoodNov 1, 2019
  17. Jeff KingNov 1, 2019
  18. Phillip WoodNov 1, 2019
  19. Junio C HamanoNov 2, 2019
  20. Denton LiuOct 31, 2019
  21. Jeff KingOct 31, 2019

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.