Shawn Pearce <spearce@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > So now we're at a point of: > > * how do we get this branch information from the remote? > * how does the remote store this branch information? > > I'm leaning towards the repo config for the latter, with say: > > [branch "pu"] > rewinds = true > description = This branch contains some proposed updates to git.\n\ > It rewinds often, as different updates are proposed or merged into 'next'. > > but looking at that think its rather horrible looking. :-) > > However for the former it may be useful if the client can download > the repo config from the remote repository, such as to fetch > the branch description data. For the former, I was hoping that we could do a new action against remote repository that is "get remote information". Just like we have "ls-remote" as a protocol neutral front-end to get what git native protocol would give "peek-remote", git native protocol would have get-repository-info action to transfer this information, and http and dumb transports do a file download from a known file, just like they download files prepared with update-server-info. Most likely, that get-repository-info is just a glorified single file transfer and nothing more. As an implementation detail, I think it is one possibility to store this information in the config of the repository being cloned from. We should be able to use repo-config to parse that file in config-like syntax to extract what we would want, so we do not have to come up with a new syntax nor a new parser, which is a big plus. Side note: repo-config, especially the updating side of it, is one of the programs I find the most brittle in the whole system, and it always makes me hesitate when somebody proposes to use config file in any important way read-write for this reason. But this "reading out per-branch information from the file" is read-only so I would not worry too much about it. Strictly speaking, however, the config file is a wrong place to store it. For one thing it has core.sharedrepository and receive.denynonfastforwards that are true configuration to control the behaviour of git _at_ _the_ _repository_ the configuration is at. The new "branch property" are primarily to help the other end, and the "filtering rewinding ones" we want at the clone/fetch side wants that information only and not interested in the true configuration information at that repository. So my preference is: * store it in a fixed filename under $GIT_DIR/$something, in a format that is similar to the true config file. * Dumb transports would just do a file transfer, and we add a new command (like "upload-pack", "upload-archive") for git native transport to read that file. We might want to have a protocol neutral wrapper (just like "ls-remote"). * Cloners and fetchers would do the file transfer and use repo-config to read from that transferred file to find out which are rewinding branches. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html