From: Hallvard Breien Furuseth <h.b.furuseth@usit.uio.no>
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2012 12:23:29 GMT
Subject: Re: [Q] Branch aliases (synonyms)?
Message-ID: <93cfd6eb9045585728dfe649359a103c@ulrik.uio.no>
In-Reply-To: <1919214.YKUdgul2iY@laclwks004>

 Brian Foster wrote:
> (...)
>  The catch is a desire(? requirement?) that, when the
>  transition ends, people used to using B can continue
>  to use B, people used to using A can continue to use A,
>  and there is no difference.  That is, after the end of
>  transition, branch names A and B are the same thing.
>  Always.  Automatically.
>
>  Using a symref seems a working answer.  That is,
>  after the merge, change B from a true branch head
>  into a symref pointing to A:
>
>       git merge ...
>       git symbolic-ref refs/heads/B refs/heads/A
>
>   ▶ What are the gotchas?

 Git clone will turn symref B into a regular branch,
 which will not move in parallel with A.

 People may have private scripts which will
 be surprised when they encounter B.  E.g. when
 parsing the output from 'git branch'.
 Check out B, then you expect B rather than A
 to be reported as the current branch:
   git checkout B
   git branch
   * A
     B -> A

>   ▶ Are there other solutions?

 You haven't explained the problem which led you to want "equal"
 branches.  E.g. if it's hard to teach developers to switch
 from B to A, a hook which rejects pushes to B might help.
 Possibly in addition to them using a private symref.  In this
 case, 'git symbolic-ref B refs/heads/A' might work better.

 Hallvard