Re: Recording the current branch on each commit?

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 28, 2014, 08:50 UTC
Message-ID: <535e165364bc5_338911e930cdf@nysa.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <535D4085.4040707@game-point.net>

Jeremy Morton wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> On 27/04/2014 10:09, Johan Herland wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 1:56 AM, Jeremy Morton<admin@game-point.net>  wrote:
> >> Currently, git records a checksum, author, commit date/time, and commit
> >> message with every commit (as get be seen from 'git log').  I think it would
> >> be useful if, along with the Author and Date, git recorded the name of the
> >> current branch on each commit.
> >
> > This has been discussed multiple times in the past. One example here:
> > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/229422
> >
> > I believe the current conclusion (if any) is that encoding such
> > information as a _structural_ part of the commit object is not useful.
> > See the old thread(s) for the actual pro/con arguments.
> 
> As far as I can tell from that discussion, the general opposition to 
> encoding the branch name as a structural part of the commit object is 
> that, for some people's workflows, it would be unhelpful and/or 
> misleading.

s/some people's workflows/most workflows/

Show 10 quoted lines

> Well fair enough then - why don't we make it a setting that 
> is off by default, and can easily be switched on?  That way the people 
> for whom tagging the branch name would be useful have a very easy way to 
> switch it on.  I know that for the workflows I personally have used in 
> the past, such tagging would be very useful.  Quite often I have been 
> looking through the Git log and wondered what feature a commit was "part 
> of", because I have feature branches.  Just knowing that branch name 
> would be really useful, but the branch has since been deleted... and in 
> the case of a ff-merge (which I thought was recommended in Git if 
> possible), the branch name is completely gone.

I still don't see why you would need that information, but if you really need it, you can write a commit hook that stores that information in the message, it's very trivial. Also, you can store that information in notes.

> You can go back through the history and find "Merge branch
> 'pacman-minigame'", but how do you know which commit was the *start* of that
> branch, if they are not tagged with the branch name?

By recording the start of the branch.

[1] https://github.com/felipec/git/commits/fc/tail

-- 
Felipe Contreras