Re: What's cooking in git.git (Sep 2011, #06; Wed, 21)

Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com> writes:

It is not even "no longer".

Unlike the other public mirrors that are designed to mimic what my repository at k.org looks like, https://github.com/gitster/git is primarily meant to mirror my internal development repository, with the full set of topic branches.

As I do not have 'html' as a branch in my development repository, the result "git push --mirror" there never had refs/heads/html, either.

My workflow used to be:

 - push 4 integration branches from the development repository to k.org,
   and have its update hook update html and man branches there;
 - optionally push todo from a different private repository to k.org;
 - fetch back refs/heads/* from k.org to refs/remotes/ko/*;
 - verify that my refs/heads/* and refs/remotes/ko/* match for 4 integration
   branches;
 - push stuff under refs/remotes/ko/* to public mirrors (sourceforge does
   not get next and pu);
 - push --mirror to https://github.com/gitster/git.

Now the interim workflow, until k.org comes back, is tentatively:

 - in a separate local "formatting" repository, pull 'master' from my
   development repository, build html and man there, and push them back
   to refs/docs/{html,man} to my development repository;
 - push refs/heads/{master,maint,next,pu} and refs/docs/{html,man} to
   public mirrors (sourceforge does not get next and pu);
 - push --mirror to https://github.com/gitster/git.

I am hoping that I do not have to keep doing this and refs/docs/ can eventually go away. I specifically do _not_ want the administrative non-source branches html/man/todo to be my local branches.

What is the expected the end-user page-flow?

Would people come to https://github.com/gitster/git first, find "doc" link there, and start browsing the html version of the documentation?

Or do people come to http://github.com/, find a link "documentation for the scm this site supports", your machinery kicks in and serves the blobs from https://github.com/gitster/git under the hood, without letting users know where the pages they are looking at really come from?

What I am getting at is that if these users do not need to know about my repository, then you do not _need_ to see html branch in my repository, either. You only need to find it _somewhere_, and that somewhere does not have to be https://github.com/gitster/git repository.

You may think you could use refs/docs/html but I would rather want to avoid letting you guys rely on refs/docs/ I started using just a few days ago as an interim measure. I may later change my mind and get rid of that from my development repository, but that would break your machinery to show preformatted documentation pages.

I could add a _separate_ repository at github, and treat it just like other public mirrors like repo.or.cz, so that you can find html branch there. That would be consistent with my wish to use "push --mirror" to at least one place (https://github.com/gitster/git), and would be easier to manage for me.

Would that work?