Re: Implementing branch attributes in git config

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: May 8, 2006, 01:27 UTC
Message-ID: <7vfyjli9vf.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0605071740550.3718@g5.osdl.org>

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> On Sun, 7 May 2006, Pavel Roskin wrote:
>> 
>> I'm only concerned that we would be hardcoding the word "branch".  We
>> could need fancy section names for other things in the future.
>
> Fair enough. We could have used some fake section name that you can't 
> generate any other way (in fact, "Branch.$branchname" would be that), but 
> the upside of using "branch" is exactly that you _can_ generate it with 
> the old-style syntax that is acceptable to older git versions too.

Sorry, I do not follow the old-style syntax part.

How about keeping the default syntax as it is (tokens are case insensitive and alnums only, dot separates tokens into sections), and when a token that violates that rule needs to be spelled out, require quoting, so:

	branch.foo	BranCh.FoO	branch.FOO

are the same (section "branch.foo"), and if I have js/fmt.patch branch, I need to spell the configuration for that branch like so:

	branch."js/fmt.patch"	or   "branch.js/fmt.patch"

and the URL variable for that section is

	$ git repo-config '"branch.js/fmt.patch".url'

(BTW, you could even have a variable with dots in it by quoting the variable name, like "branch.js/fmt.patch"."fetch.option"; I do not know if it is worth it).

My repository is full of topic branches that are named xx/yyyy. It is very handy to be able to say "show-branch --topics master 'heads/??/*' next" which would not show my other branches like "test", "throwaway", "rework", "temp", etc.