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

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Feb 28, 2006, 00:41 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0602271634410.22647@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <46a038f90602271625y6c7e9072u372b8dd3662e272c@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006, Martin Langhoff wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> 
> git-svn-HEAD "moves" so it's really a bad idea to have it as a tag.
> Nothing within core git prevents it from moving, but I think that
> porcelains will start breaking. Tags and heads are the same thing,
> except that heads are expected to change (specifically, to move
> forward), and tags are expected to stand still.

Well, I wouldn't say that tags are expected to stand still. Some kinds of tags are expected to move: a "this is the last tested version" tag would be expected to move with testing.

That said, the movement is _different_ from a branch. A branch is expected to move _with_ development, while a tag is expected to either stay the same, or move _after_ development.

However, in many ways git really doesn't care much. The "refs/heads" directory is the only one that is really special, in that "git checkout" refuses to check out a moving branch in anything but that subdirectory. The "tags" subdirectory is slightly special to some helpers (like "git pull"), which have flags to pull everythying in that subdirectory.

But other than those two pretty trivial issues, any ref under "refs/" should work perfectly fine. I would argue that a specialized tracking tool might well be better off without using either "refs/heads" _or_ "refs/tags", since those have accepted meaning outside of tracking.

Using a "refs/remotes" subdirectory makes tons of sense for something like this. Or something even more specific, like "refs/svn-tracking/". Git shouldn't care - all the tools _should_ work fine with any subdirectory structure.

		Linus