Re: branch description as a note?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 11, 2024, 16:11 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq4j3ai4it.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <D68T28TFNW6N.2W0WV6WOUT6V0@ferdinandy.com>

"Bence Ferdinandy" <bence@ferdinandy.com> writes:

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> so I've been wondering about branch descriptions being just a local
> configuration. The only use-case I know for them is generating cover letters
> and request-pull, although I could imagine maybe the maintainer uses branch
> descriptions for storing the - well - branch descriptions for the "What's
> cooking" emails and the merge commit messages.

FWIW, that is not how I maintain "What's cooking". Rather, the next issue os "What's cooking" is pretty much edited manually, plus a tool that notices when an existing topic advances in order to insert these "(merged to 'next' on such and such day)" lines and turn '-' bullets into '+', and move topics from other sections to 'graduated' section. Especially when writing comments on a topic, being able to read about other topics (which may be related) and the list of titles helps a lot.

There may be folks who find branch descriptions a useful way to keep a quick reminder about the branch. I was also hoping it may be like so, but I seem to have failed to exploit it as a useful component in my workflow.

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> Now my problem with the description being a local configuration, is that
> I often work on patches on two different computers. I can easily share my patch
> notes with myself, but not the branch description. If these could be pushed and
> fetched like a note, I think that would open up some other nice possibilities
> as well, like having a standard place for MR/PR messages for forges, sharing
> proposed merge commit messages, maybe other things.

If this is about draft work, I would use an empty commit at the tip of the branch.

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> For my personal issue of sharing branch descriptions with myself, I could
> probably just make up a convention for myself, say using refs/notes/branches,
> but it would be nice to have this built in, instead of the local config branch
> description.
>
> From usage perspective I could imagine a new `--branch` flag for notes, which
> would tell `git notes` to operate on notes attached to branches instead of
> specific commits, probably stored under refs/notes/branches by default. Maybe
> add an `--edit-branch-note` to `git branch`. And of course have the option to
> use this note instead of the description configuration wherever it makes sense.
>
> What do you think?

The notes tree is a hashmap that uses object names as the key. The point of a branch is that it can grow by accumulating new commits on it, or its commits rewritten with "rebase -i", and there are branches with more than one commit. So to what commit on the branch would you hang such a note on?