Re: git-svn and huge data and modifying the git-svn-HEAD branch directly

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Mar 1, 2006, 21:07 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0603012202250.9893@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0603010821590.22647@g5.osdl.org>

Hi,

On Wed, 1 Mar 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote:

Show 26 quoted lines

> On Wed, 1 Mar 2006, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> > 
> > Personally I'm all for namespace separation. I'm assuming the script 
> > has the tracker-branch hardcoded anyway, so I don't really understand 
> > why it would be necessary to keep other refs in a separate directory 
> > and, if it *is* necessary, why that subdirectory can't be 
> > .git/refs/heads/svn.
> > 
> > Eric mentioned earlier that the tracking-branch can't be committed to 
> > (ever), so the user convenience for searching other directories should 
> > be nearly non-existant.
> 
> The thing about it being .git/refs/heads/svn/xyzzy is that then you can 
> do
> 
> 	git checkout svn/xyzzy
> 
> _not_ a branch and you must _not_ commit to it.
> 
> It's much more like a tag: it's a pointer to the last point of an 
> svn-import.
> 
> So I think it should either _be_ a tag (although Dscho worries about some 
> broken porcelain being confused by tags changing) or it should be in a 
> namespace all it's own. Not under .git/refs/heads/ at any point, because 
> it is _not_ a head of development.

I almost missed that you reference me in the email (often, I just delete the email if the Subject is of no interest to me).

I did not worry about broken porcelain. I saw broken porcelain. But that is more a broken concept than broken porcelain: in a distributed environment, there is no way to have a reliable tag. Think about it: whenever you have two different versions of a tag, you cannot know which one is the correct one.

But my worries do not matter at all for local tags.

Conceptually, however, the last point of a svnimport should *never* be a tag, but *always* a head.

Ciao, Dscho