Feature Request: Branch Annotations

Feature Request: Branch Annotations

[Rotem Yaari]

Hi,

I usually work with many branches in git, each of which represents a
different state of development/stability, but also development tasks
assigned to me.
Sometimes, besides the name of the branch, it could be useful to have
a short description of a branch which quickly reminds me what that
branch is intended for.

Currently I see no way in git to achieve this (there's a description
for a repository, but not for individual branches).

Any opinions on this?


Thanks in advance,

--
Rotem

Re: Feature Request: Branch Annotations

[Thomas Adam]

2008/10/8 Rotem Yaari <vmalloc@gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> I usually work with many branches in git, each of which represents a
> different state of development/stability, but also development tasks
> assigned to me.
> Sometimes, besides the name of the branch, it could be useful to have
> a short description of a branch which quickly reminds me what that
> branch is intended for.
>
> Currently I see no way in git to achieve this (there's a description
> for a repository, but not for individual branches).
>
> Any opinions on this?

Wasn't this discussed here before, with a prototype?  ISTR it was, but
dropped due to lack of interest?  Have a look through the archives.

-- Thomas Adam

Re: Feature Request: Branch Annotations

[Baz]

2008/10/8 Thomas Adam <thomas.adam22@gmail.com>:
> 2008/10/8 Rotem Yaari <vmalloc@gmail.com>:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I usually work with many branches in git, each of which represents a
>> different state of development/stability, but also development tasks
>> assigned to me.
>> Sometimes, besides the name of the branch, it could be useful to have
>> a short description of a branch which quickly reminds me what that
>> branch is intended for.
>>
>> Currently I see no way in git to achieve this (there's a description
>> for a repository, but not for individual branches).
>>
>> Any opinions on this?
>
> Wasn't this discussed here before, with a prototype?  ISTR it was, but
> dropped due to lack of interest?  Have a look through the archives.

The most recent thread was 'branch description' back in April, which
discussed alternatives, but petered out:
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2008/4/15/1442684/thread

An older thread on 'topic descriptions' where Junio described his use
of the config file for this:
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2006/12/6/232466/thread

And there's a similar feature in stgit, which uses the same config
setting that Junio did:
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2007/5/14/246358
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2007/4/12/243404

-Baz

>
> -- Thomas Adam
> --
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Re: Feature Request: Branch Annotations

[Marc Weber]

On Wed, Oct 08, 2008 at 12:41:43PM +0100, Baz wrote:
> 2008/10/8 Thomas Adam <thomas.adam22@gmail.com>:
> > 2008/10/8 Rotem Yaari <vmalloc@gmail.com>:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I usually work with many branches in git, each of which represents a
> >> different state of development/stability, but also development tasks
> >> assigned to me.
> >> Sometimes, besides the name of the branch, it could be useful to have
> >> a short description of a branch which quickly reminds me what that
> >> branch is intended for.
> >>
> >> Currently I see no way in git to achieve this (there's a description
> >> for a repository, but not for individual branches).
> >>
> >> Any opinions on this?
[...]
Probably I've missed something. but doesn't top git add some special
files to remember branch relations?
I guess it removes them before merging upstream ?
I would have to reread the README or topGit source to confirm this.

Marc Weber

Re: Feature Request: Branch Annotations

[David Soria Parra]

> Any opinions on this?

would be great to have something like that build in git-core like

git branch -i 'Fix bla' ds/fix next
git branch -i
  ds/fix (Fix Bla)

david

Re: Feature Request: Branch Annotations

[Junio C Hamano]

David Soria Parra <sn_@gmx.net> writes:

>> Any opinions on this?
>
> would be great to have something like that build in git-core like
>
> git branch -i 'Fix bla' ds/fix next
> git branch -i
>  ds/fix (Fix Bla)

Haven't people watched Linus on google tech talk?  Here is an excerpt from
the transcript (http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/LinusTalk200705Transcript):

    ... well actually you shouldn't call it "test", you should basically
    name your branches the way you name your functions, you should call
    them something short and sweet and to the point -- What is that branch
    doing.

IOW, why did you name the branch "ds/fix" and not "ds/fix-bla"?

Re: Feature Request: Branch Annotations

[David Soria Parra]

> Haven't people watched Linus on google tech talk?  Here is an excerpt from
> the transcript (http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/LinusTalk200705Transcript):
> 
>     ... well actually you shouldn't call it "test", you should basically
>     name your branches the way you name your functions, you should call
>     them something short and sweet and to the point -- What is that branch
>     doing.
> 
> IOW, why did you name the branch "ds/fix" and not "ds/fix-bla"?

Okay I just choosed a bad example. Actually I call it ds/fix-function, 
but nevertheless more additional description can be useful when dealing 
with a lot of branches. But yes, there might be porcelains that can do that.

Re: Feature Request: Branch Annotations

[Avery Pennarun]

On 10/8/08, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> David Soria Parra <sn_@gmx.net> writes:
>
>  >> Any opinions on this?
>  >
>  > would be great to have something like that build in git-core like
>  >
>  > git branch -i 'Fix bla' ds/fix next
>  > git branch -i
>  >  ds/fix (Fix Bla)
>
> Haven't people watched Linus on google tech talk?  Here is an excerpt from
>  the transcript (http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/LinusTalk200705Transcript):
>
>     ... well actually you shouldn't call it "test", you should basically
>     name your branches the way you name your functions, you should call
>     them something short and sweet and to the point -- What is that branch
>     doing.
>
>  IOW, why did you name the branch "ds/fix" and not "ds/fix-bla"?

Because it would be excessive typing every time you want to do
something to that branch?

I guess bash completions would help with this (if you're using bash),
but even then it's kind of unreasonable to name branches something
like "bug-111234-widget-performance-improvements-for-customer-x",
which is the sort of information that would be awfully helpful two
months later when you're looking at old unmerged branches.

Avery

Re: Feature Request: Branch Annotations

[Miklos Vajna]

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On Wed, Oct 08, 2008 at 07:21:33PM -0400, Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess bash completions would help with this (if you're using bash),
> but even then it's kind of unreasonable to name branches something
> like "bug-111234-widget-performance-improvements-for-customer-x",

I think you haven't read the links mentioned in the previous mail.

IIRC the thread had a suggestion about creating such a 'desc' branch,
then you could just have a branch named 'fix' and you could do git show
desc:fix to see its description.

Just use git as a filesystem, as it was originally designed... ;-)

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Re: Feature Request: Branch Annotations

[Peter Krefting]

Avery Pennarun:

> I guess bash completions would help with this (if you're using bash),
> but even then it's kind of unreasonable to name branches something
> like "bug-111234-widget-performance-improvements-for-customer-x",
> which is the sort of information that would be awfully helpful two
> months later when you're looking at old unmerged branches.

That's exactly what I do for one of the projects I am working on (well,
minus the "bug-" prefix, that's implied). Bash completion works quite
well for that, and the merge commits do give meaningful information.

But I would still like to be able to annotate it. Especially for
long-living bug-fix branches, it could be useful to be able to add
describe a branch with what state it is in, for instance.

-- 
\\// Peter - http://www.softwolves.pp.se/