From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Michael Haggerty Subject: Re: Storing additional information in commit headers Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:53:12 +0200 Message-ID: <4E380148.7010701@alum.mit.edu> References: <20110801182015.GA3100@fishbowl.rw.madduck.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: git discussion list , Petr Baudis , Clemens Buchacher To: martin f krafft X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Tue Aug 02 15:53:27 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1QoFPS-0004Sc-QA for gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org; Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:53:27 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754064Ab1HBNxX (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Aug 2011 09:53:23 -0400 Received: from einhorn.in-berlin.de ([192.109.42.8]:59481 "EHLO einhorn.in-berlin.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752096Ab1HBNxV (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Aug 2011 09:53:21 -0400 X-Envelope-From: mhagger@alum.mit.edu Received: from [192.168.100.152] (ssh.berlin.jpk.com [212.222.128.135]) (authenticated bits=0) by einhorn.in-berlin.de (8.13.6/8.13.6/Debian-1) with ESMTP id p72DrChW032048 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT); Tue, 2 Aug 2011 15:53:12 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110617 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.11 In-Reply-To: <20110801182015.GA3100@fishbowl.rw.madduck.net> X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang_at_IN-Berlin_e.V. on 192.109.42.8 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On 08/01/2011 08:20 PM, martin f krafft wrote: > Are there any strong reasons against my use of commit headers for > specific, well-defined purposes in contained use-cases? E.g. are > there tools known to only copy "known" headers, which could > potentially break my assumptions? Before you store important information in a git-internal data structure, please consider: * Some of your developers might prefer using another DVCS (e.g., Mercurial via hg-git) and they will not be able to see the information at all * Some day the main project might want to (god forbid!) switch to a successor to git, and your extra information might be difficult to migrate. * Somebody might want to work with your project from a tarball rather than having to install and use git. Therefore, I recommend a strong bias towards storing information in as transparent, non-system-specific a way as possible. Metadata and scripts stored within the file tree part of the repository are typically a lot easier to work with and more transparent than git-specific hacks. That being said, I haven't understood your application well enough to know whether these biases might be trumped by convenience in your particular situation. Michael -- Michael Haggerty mhagger@alum.mit.edu http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/