From: Brandon Casey <casey@nrlssc.navy.mil>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:37:23 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] filter-branch.sh: support nearly proper tag name filtering
Message-ID: <47E7F4E3.8050406@nrlssc.navy.mil>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LSU.1.00.0803241812230.4353@racer.site>

Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, 24 Mar 2008, Brandon Casey wrote:
> 
>> Johannes Schindelin wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 24 Mar 2008, Brandon Casey wrote:
>>>
>>>> So right now, tags matching the refspec are rewritten. They are 
>>>> currently rewritten with a lightweight tag.
>>> That is unintended.  My understanding of a tag was always that it is 
>>> something immutable.  I mean, _really_ immutable.  If you released a 
>>> certain version, then that is tagged.  You must not rewrite the tag.  
>>> Ever.
>> Then what is the intended behavior for --tag-name-filter?
> 
> To be honest, I wanted to rip that part out before posting the initial 
> filter-branch patches, and forgot/was too lazy.
> 
> IMO there should be clean semantics first, and a default mode that does 
> _not_ rewrite tags at all first.

There isn't really a "default" mode for --tag-name-filter, a script must
always be supplied. The name of the option (--tag- _name_ -filter) implies
that it is intended for changing the names of tags. If the user decides
not to change the name, then I think the user would expect the old tag to
be replaced.

So the user could choose to:

          Rewrite tag ref: --tag-name-filter cat
                        or
 Give new tags a new name: --tag-name-filter 'sed -e s/$/.new/'
                        or
       Save original tags: --tag-name-filter 'sed -e s/$/.orig/'
     Then create new ones: --tag-name-filter 'sed -e s/\.orig$//' [plus additional filtering]

More precise control over tag filtering should probably have an option
with a different name like --tag-filter, at which point --tag-name-filter
could be deprecated.

-brandon