Re: Symbolic 'references' in Git?

[Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>]

Chris Patti venit, vidit, dixit 14.04.2011 23:31:
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 5:24 PM, Wesley J. Landaker <wjl@icecavern.net> wrote:
>> On Thursday, April 14, 2011 14:30:59 Chris Patti wrote:
>>> We want a way to have our Bamboo configuration utilize a symbol to
>>> refer to 'latest release' 'latest patch' etc. in Git, rather than
>>> having to go in and change the actual branch name every time we ship a
>>> release and create a new one.
>>>
>>> We thought about using something like:
>>>
>>> git symbolic-ref -m'new next-release branch build for Bamboo'
>>> next-release release-3.15
>>>
>>> However, this symbolic ref is only local to one repository, and we
>>> want it to be global across all of Bamboo.
>>>
>>> Rather than resorting to manually copying the symbolic ref file
>>> around, from repo to repo, is there any way to make such a symbolic
>>> 'variable' global?
>>
>> Why not just use a tag or a branch ?
>>
>> git tag -F next-release release-3.15
>>
>>  OR
>>
>> git branch -D next-release
>> git branch next-release release-3.15
>>
>> (I personally think branches are nicer for this since tags are "supposed" to
>> be immutable.)
>>
> 
> 
> Won't either of those things create a 'next-release' that's frozen in
> time where the release-3.15 branch is *right now*?
> 
> This is for a CI system (Bamboo) so we need next-release to act as if
> we were using release-3.15 itself.

Maybe add a refspec

refs/heads/release-3.15:refs/heads/release

which ensures that you push that branch out under two names? When you
(integrator/release manager) switch to a different release branch you
just need to change your config (and probably push -f).

Michael