Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 3:51 PM, Philip Oakley <philipoakley@xxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> Is one option to store the branch description (if any) on line two of the >> <branch name> file in .git\refs\heads. > > Or even on line one. > > We already basically do that for the magic FETCH_HEAD branch, and use > it to populate the merge commit. Extending that kind of thing to all > branches might be a nice idea. > > Of course, then the question becomes "what about packed refs"? Do you > just leave the unpacked ref in place for those? Seriously, storage format is not an issue at all and you know it. The semantics is. What commands use the description and for what purpose, how it is updated when the branch is repurposed, how it is propagated to other repositories, if there is a situation where two descriptions need to be merged, and if so how that merge happens, etc., etc. We could store it in unused part of loose refs. We could add [branch "master"] description = ... in the .git/config. The latter would even be easier for humans to edit by hand. If we want to use the description when merging locally, for example, fmt-merge-msg needs to be taught to read it, which would mean we would need an internal API "read_branch_description()", regardless of what storage format we choose to use. If we want to use it for "git pull", then the transport layer needs to become aware of it. -- 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