Re: Implementing branch attributes in git config

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: May 8, 2006, 00:25 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0605071718440.3718@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0605071629080.3718@g5.osdl.org>

On Sun, 7 May 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

>
> The downside is that if you start using config files like this, you 
> literally can't go back to older git versions. They'll refuse to touch 
> such a config file (rather than just ignoring the new entries) and will 
> exit with nasty messages. That might be unacceptable.

Side note: with this syntax, the _users_ will all just basically do

	if (!strncmp(name, "branch.", 7)) {
		branch = name + 7;
		dot = strchr(branch, '.');
		if (!dot)
			return -1;
		*dot++ = 0;
		.. we now have the branchname in "branc",
		    and the rest in "dot" ..

and if your branch names are purely alphabetical and lower-case, you can now write

	[branch.origin]
		remote = true
		url = git://git.kernel.org/...
		fetch = master

	[branch.master]
		pull = origin

and it will be parsed _exactly_ the same as

	["origin"]
		remote = true
		url = git://git.kernel.org/...
		fetch = master

	["master"]
		pull = origin

while the [branch.origin] syntax allows old versions of git to happily ignore it. So that would be a kind of cheesy work-around: the new double-quoted format is only _required_ for any branch-names that have special characters in it.

		Linus