Re: Avoiding 'master' nomenclature

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Aug 11, 2020, 02:39 UTC
Message-ID: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.2008110430080.50@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqo8nicxn2.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>

Hi Junio,

On Mon, 10 Aug 2020, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:
>
> > TBH I expected some discussion along the line "Shouldn't this be an
> > opt-in, with the initial default saying 'every branch except
> > `master`'?", but that seems not to have taken place.
>
> I do not quite get it.  Without any explicit configuration, every branch
> except 'master' is shown, just like we've done for the past 15 years.
> You can opt into hiding other names instead of 'master', hiding nothing,
> or hiding everything.

Sorry for being unclear.

What I meant was: instead of a list of negative patterns, it might be more desirable to have a positive list of patterns, with the option to exclude some, much in the way `.gitignore` allows us to do. Something like this:

	[merge]
		mentionDestinationBranch = *
		mentionDestinationBranch = !master

i.e. a list that specifies which branch names we _do_ want to mention in the merge commit's message, with possible exceptions.

However, this might be overkill, and a bit more complicated to implement, as we now would also have to allow "negative" patterns. The most likely avenue to this would be to use the `exclude_list` machinery, which would be doubly confusing because we no longer would _exclude_ but _include_ a set of branch names.

I am not sure that it makes sense to pursue this direction, but I wanted to at least mention it lest we bump into limitations later that cannot be fixed, by design.

What do you think?

Ciao, Dscho