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

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Mar 1, 2006, 23:43 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0603011538580.22647@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <87zmk9zr42.wl%cworth@cworth.org>

On Wed, 1 Mar 2006, Carl Worth wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Meanwhile, as I've been teaching new git users, I've had to carefully
> teach:
> 
> 1) Never commit to a branch name that appears on the right side of ':'
>    in a Pull: refspec.
> 
> 2) BTW, that ':' might be only implicit. A refspec of "branch" is
>    equivalent to "branch:branch" so don't commit to those either.
> 
> That's pretty painful, so I really think these remote-tracking refs
> belong outside of refs/heads.

In the same vein, I think the refs/remotes/<remotename>/<branchname> naming will make it possible for people who track multiple remotes to sanely work with the fact that they might track 10 separate branches from Jeff, one branch from me, and a couple of branches from Greg in the same tree, without just going crazy.

I agree that we could solve the "don't touch that branch" issue another way, by just making them read-only. But the reason I like the separate namespace is that it just seems to organize the branches really well, and in an unambiguous - and logical - manner.

I too find myself looking at "git branch" output, and a lot of it is stuff I don't really care about - much of it is just the branches I got for just tracking Junio's git repo.

		Linus