Re: [PATCH 00/16] Cleanup {branches,remotes}-file cruft

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 21, 2013, 16:22 UTC
Message-ID: <CALkWK0mr4KU_VydBs9MP+4N7dROeGEnL-eM+W1ekqyOBPLeA5w@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vsj0bo7pr.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> The last time I hinted removal of .git/branches/, Andrew Morton
> reminded me that there are those who use Git primarily to fetch from
> many dozens of other people's branches, to maintain his own quilt
> patch series on top of, and never push anything back.  To them,
> being able to say
>
>     $ echo the-repository-url#the-branch >.git/branches/the-subsys
>     $ rm .git/branches/the-subsys
>
> has been a much easier and simpler way than "git config".  The only
> thing they do with them is essentially:
>
>     $ git fetch the-subsys
>     ... use FETCH_HEAD to integrate it to a larger whole
>     ... against which his remaining quilt queue is rebuilt

Interesting. A cheap alias for a URL + branch that can be added/removed very easily. I suppose it's worth keeping around.

Show 5 quoted lines

> I myself thought that replacing the established work process of
> these people to the one that instead uses "git config" should be
> simple enough even back then, and in the longer term, these old
> mechanisms will become disused so that we can remove them, but
> deciding _when_ is the good time is not a no-brainer at all.

Oh, this series is not about removing the feature: it's about removing dead code, testing the feature properly, and not mentioning it in obscure places. It is a prerequisite for removal, if we desire to do that at some later point. After your explanation, I think everything but [16/16] is fine. [16/16] adds a comment about deprecation; we should tweak/drop it.