Re: branch annotations?

From: Johan Herland <johan@herland.net>
Date: Nov 25, 2013, 14:55 UTC
Message-ID: <CALKQrgdTxYmy2ncXNB29B0-05g8CK=-jxWfDVPbUjHTPsm1yOw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20131125084644.350bd4f7@bigbox.christie.dr>

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 3:46 PM, Tim Chase <git@tim.thechases.com> wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> Is there any way to associate some sort of note with a branch that
> would be shown when listing them?  While I currently have things like
> "issue/QA-42", it would be nice to have a note associated with it so
> I could do something like
>
>   $ git branch --show-notes
>     issue/CR-88: make sure NoSQL engines support .CSV file backends
>     issue/QA-31: add missile launch codes
>   * issue/QA-42: support flying cars
>     master
>
> as I currently need to flip back and forth between my git/terminal
> and my issue-tracker to know that, if I need to be adding missile
> launch codes, I need to be working on QA-31.  I know there are "note"
> features elsewhere for commits, and I know that git-branch supports
> showing the most recent commit (that's not always enough info to
> discern the branch's purpose).
>
> Thanks for any ideas on how to ease this pain-point, :-)

"git branch --edit-description" allows you to write a descriptive string for your branch. AFAICS, however, it currently only shows up when using request-pull. It does not show up in any git branch command. IMHO that should be fixed.

As a workaround, you can use this one-liner:

  git for-each-ref --format "%(refname:short)" refs/heads/ | while
read branch; do echo "$branch - $(git config
branch.$branch.description)"; done

I guess that could even be turned into an alias...

Hope this helps,

...Johan

-- 
Johan Herland, <johan@herland.net>
www.herland.net