Re: git branch --edit-description a custom file

[Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com>]

Hi Denton & Dscho

On 31/10/2019 18:19, Denton Liu wrote:
> Hi Dscho,
> 
> On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 11:22:16AM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
>> Hi Peff,
>>
>> On Thu, 31 Oct 2019, Jeff King wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 03:43:28PM -0700, Denton Liu wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 04:28:35PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
>>>> Dscho brought up in the GGG thread[1] that perhaps we want to treat
>>>> branch descriptions like notes and have them all under something like
>>>> `refs/notes/branches`. This would certainly solve my problem of
>>>> having versioned descriptions and it would probably do it in a much more
>>>> general way than having a versioned included config.
>>>>
>>>> Anyone see any potential problems with this approach?
>>>
>>> I don't think it would be `refs/notes/`, as that is assumed to contain
>>> mappings of object ids (and if I understand correctly, this would be a
>>> mapping of branch names to data.
>>>
>>> You could just have "refs/meta/descriptions/foo" pointing to a blob
>>> which contains the description of "refs/heads/foo". That makes it easy
>>> to edit descriptions, even if you don't like using "git branch
>>> --edit-description".
>>
>> The only problem with this is that it's not really versioned, as it
>> would be hard to go back to previous versions and/or share the history
>> via pushing to a remote repository.
>>
>> But I guess that a very simple pseudo branch would do it, where
>> `refs/meta/<branch-name>` would point to a commit that has a tree
>> with a single file in it: `description.txt`.
> 
> So how would you envision the workflow for this? Would it be something
> like,
> 
> 	$ git checkout feature-1
> 
> 	$ git branch --edit-description=ref # instead of =config

Personally I'd prefer a config setting that meant --edit-description 
stored the description in a ref instead of the current config key (or 
perhaps as well as so format-patch can just get the latest branch 
description from the config key)

> 	# editor opens up, :wq
> 
> 	# is it find to have an autogenerated commit message?
> 	$ git show refs/meta/feature-1
> 	commit 80dfea1dc4492aaabc80d23fbaffe86da55ee098 (refs/meta/feature-1)
> 	Author: Denton Liu <liu.denton@gmail.com>
> 	Date:   42 seconds ago
> 
> 	    Update ref description
> 
> 	diff --git a/description.txt b/description.txt
> 	new file mode 100644
> 	index 0000000..ed03a4b
> 	--- /dev/null
> 	+++ b/description.txt
> 	@@ -0,0 +1 @@
> 	+this is a description
> 
> I have some open questions about this, though:
> 
> * Since we're planning on sharing these descriptions with the outside
>    world, how would the ref layout look like? If we're not using the
>    refs/remotes namespace will it make fetching and merging notes harder?
>    I know that collaborating with notes is a pain so how do we avoid
>    making the same mistake?

I'd love to see a consensus around putting remote versions of refs/foo 
under refs/remote/<remote-name>/foo. To share notes I add a refspec that 
fetches to refs/remote/<remote-name>/notes. It is a pain that 'git pull' 
wont merge them for me though.

> * On the above point, what if local descriptions are at
>    refs/meta/heads/feature-1 while remote descriptions are at
>    refs/meta/remotes/*/feature-1?
> 
> * What would a merge workflow look like? Would we have wrapper commands
>    for it or do users just have to checkout the description branch
>    themselves?

Teaching 'git pull' to (configurably) merge things under 
refs/remote/<remote-name>/foo to refs/foo would be a useful addition, 
then it could merge notes and any other refs people are sharing.

Best Wishes

Phillip


> Thanks,
> 
> Denton
> 
>>
>> I now like that idea a lot better than my original notes idea.
>>
>> Ciao,
>> Dscho