remotes/* for "foreign" archives (was Re: tracking many cvs/svn/git remote archives)

[merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz)]

>>>>> "Randal" == Randal L Schwartz <merlyn@stonehenge.com> writes:

Randal>             *-GIT*)
Randal>                 ## first, update "origin":
Randal>                 case $i in
Randal>                     *-GIT)
Randal>                         git-fetch
Randal>                         ;;
Randal>                     *-GITCVS)
Randal>                         git-cvsimport -k -i $(git-repo-config getcvs.gitcvsargs)
Randal>                         ;;
Randal>                     *-GITSVN)
Randal>                         ## be sure to have origin "ref: refs/remotes/git-svn"
Randal>                         git-svn multi-fetch
Randal>                         ;;
Randal>                 esac

It occurred to me after posting this, and while still thinking about the
presentation I'm writing, that it'd be interesting if "get-fetch" could hide
this from me.

If the file in remotes/origin looked something like:

        Pull: !git-svn multi-fetch trunk
        Push: !git-svn commit

then git-fetch and git-push could treat "origin" as a "foreign" branch
and indirect through these commands.

Then I could just use "git-pull" naively, and it would git-fetch origin,
invoking git-svn multi-fetch trunk to update it, and later I could
git-push and it would use git-svn commit.

This idea is half baked, but it could definitely hide the various foreign
adaptors from the invocation line, allowing layered tools to use them
transparently.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.