Re: Implementing branch attributes in git config

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: May 9, 2006, 01:05 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0605081801360.3718@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <7virogc90u.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Mon, 8 May 2006, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> >
> > The problem with _that_ is that "git repo-config" can't add this kind of 
> > setup sanely: it doesn't understand that kind of statefulness.
> 
> Wait a minute...  Statefulness is not the issue, I think.

Well, it does end up being..

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> How would you tell your updated repo-config what to update and
> what to look up?
> 
> 	- I want the url for branch whose name is "origin"
> 
> 	- I want to fetch their "for-linus" branch when fetching
>           from the branch whose name is "jgarzik" from now on.

Exactly, git repo-config would have to know about this magic thing, and have a special argument like

	--state=branch.name

that says that "state" is to be taken from the "branch.name" variable when seen.

Then, in addition to the regexp, you would have a way to trigger on the "state" variable.

Show 10 quoted lines

> Now, how would that compare with:
> 
>         [branch.jgarzik]
>                 url = git://git.kernel.org/...
>                 fetch = for-linus
> 
> or
> 	[branch."JGarzik"]
>                 url = git://git.kernel.org/...
>                 fetch = for-linus

It would be _able_ to do all the same things, but thanks to statefulness you'd be able to keep the section (and key) names the way they are.

> On a related topic, I have always been torn about the "for"
> convention.

I agree. And I think it's actually very much the same thing. It adds state, but it adds it to each _value_, instead of adding it once "before" the values.

		Linus