idea: git "came from" tags
- From
- D Herring <dherring@tentpost.com>
- Date
- Jan 18, 2010, 04:22 UTC
- Message-ID
- <hj0nl9$uds$2@ger.gmane.org>
Actors: - public "upstream" repository - public "local" repository - end users tracking both
Situation: - local starts by tracking upstream - local makes changes, commits, and sends upstream - users now tracking local ahead of upstream - upstream makes modified commits - local satisfied, wants to reset master to upstream/master
Problem: - A merge will perpetually leave two parallel branches. Even though there are no longer any diffs, local/master cannot use the same objects as upstream/master. - A hard reset lets local/master return to sharing objects with upstream/master; but this may break pulls or cause other problems for users.
Proposed solution: - Local adds a "came from" tag to upstream/master, leaves a tag on the head of local/master, and does a hard reset from local/master to upstream/master. When a user tracking local/master does a pull, their client detects a non-fast-forward, finds the came-from tag, and treats it as a fast-forward.
Basically, this is a protocol to glue a "strategy ours" merge onto an existing tree. This way local can cleanly track upstream, with no added complexity in the nominal (no local changes) case.
Example: Without this addition, local/master looks something like u1 - u2 - u3 - u4 - u5 - u6 ... \- l1 - l2\+ m1 - \+ m2\+ m3 ...
With this addition, local/master looks like u1 - u2 - u3(tcf) - u4 - u5 - u6 ... \- l1 - l2 - t0 where * u# = upstream changes * l# = local changes * m# = local merges (m1=u3, m2=u5, m3=u6, ...) * the tcf tag points to t0, and t0 tags the end of the local mods
Pseudo-shell-code addition to git-pull:
fetch local/master
fast_forward=usual test whether local/master contains user/master
if test $fast_forward = no
then
for tag in $fetched_tags # something like this or git-describe
do
if is_came_from($tag) && (came_from($tag) contains user/master)
then
fast_forward=yes
break
fi
done
fiComments? I think this is completely implementable (though I'm not well-versed in git internals). Since it only triggers during non-fast-forward operations, it should have negligible performance impact.
Of course, it would be even better if somebody shows me how to do this with the current tools. Maybe I'm just doing it all wrong.
Thanks, Daniel