Re: How to check out the repository at a particular point in time

From: Michael Witten <mfwitten@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 23, 2011, 15:54 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMOZ1Bti3ZtAEOtLiUYSkWE+rO_VQd09NAn58Cn4hZBu8f-aFQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <1314026326.37332.YahooMailClassic@web25408.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 15:18, R. Diez <rdiezmail-temp2@yahoo.de> wrote:

Show 21 quoted lines

>> The main problem is that your request is not very
>> well-defined: in
>> nonlinear history there will in general be more than one
>> commit at the
>> time requested.
>>
>>     ---a----b----c----M----  (M is a merge)
>>         \            /
>>          d-----e----f
>>
>>              ^----April 1st
>>
>> Suppose you ask git for "the newest commit as of April 1st"
>> in this history.  Is it supposed to give you b or d?
>
> I still don't quite understand how git works, but let me
> risk a naive statement here. If "a-b-c-M" were 'master',
> and "d-e-f" were 'new-feature', then on April 1st the
> current version on 'master' is 'b', because I merged the
> 'new-feature' branch at a later point in time. Does that
> make sense?

O! for the love all that is Holy!

You see, guys? The term `branch' was a TERRIBLE choice.

What git calls `branch master' in your example is just a pointer to the commit object `M'; it has nothing to do with particular lineages like `a-b-c-M'.

Please see my discussion with Hilco, starting here:

  http://marc.info/?l=git&m=131364675708355&w=2
  Message-ID: CAMOZ1BsZvXsnnWAPXR7UGKdqOMwuGB-ffaAPk55U_1dcjZUcDw@mail.gmail.com

and this email in particular:

  http://marc.info/?l=git&m=131396006222173&w=2
  Message-ID: CAMOZ1BvpnP_729YOHrrPW3B8wa5c4cLyD_qAQ5rTuy0JqNiiXg@mail.gmail.com

which also includes the following very germane link:

  http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2350536&cid=36903136