Andy Parkins <andyparkins@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Tuesday 2007 May 01, Junio C Hamano wrote: > >> Which leaves 'master' right now at v1.5.2-rc1 while 'next' at >> v1.5.2-rc1-687-gcb3892c; we might want to do something about >> this apparent discrepancy. > > It's perfect - I'd say that it's exactly right. > > git-describe is for making unique - human readable names for points in > history, not for describing the tree. It makes no difference that A and B > have the same tree, they are different points. > > I've always thought of git-describe as being a way of mapping a commit hash to > a nicer looking name. If A and B are different commits then they should have > different names. Although 'next' and 'master' have vastly different histories behind them, among 685 commits between master and next, only 27 are non-merges, among which 20 are "real" commits that tried to advance various topics that failed, and 7 are reverts against these 20 commits [*1*]. Even though hstory of failed attempts (why they initially seemed good ideas, how they tried to solve problems, and why they turned out not to be so good ideas in the end) are interesting, if we ignore the failed attempts, iow, if we view the history from the point of view of "surviving features", the development history of 'next' and 'master' are moral equivalents. Yes, most of them were merged way earlier in 'next' than 'master', many of them were merged in multiple steps of two and three to 'next' and then finally merged to 'master' with a single merge, but the changes did hit both 'master' and 'next' (obviously, that is why we ended up with the same trees). So the equivalence of 'master' and 'next' tonight is not quite the same as equating two random commits that happen to have the same tree. v1.5.2-rc1 and v1.5.2-rc1-687-gcb3892c should naturally have the same tree because they share conceptually the same history. But I was not talking about changing describe output because of the above argument. What I was wondering was that it might be a good idea to loosen the promise of never rewinding 'next'. It might be easier to view the history of 'next' during development for each cycle, if it started afresh after a feature release. Since now we are in a stabilization freeze, I expect that 'master' and 'next' will always have identical trees until v1.5.2 final. We _could_ declare now that 'next' will be reset to 'master' when v1.5.2 happens, and people who forked from 'next' to do their own customization can rebase any time that is convenient for them between tonight and v1.5.2 final. I was not sure if that is even a good idea, and I am now inclined to think that keeping the failed attempt history is probably better than potentially causing confusion to people who follow 'next'. But it _is_ a possibility to reset 'next' to 'master'. [Footnote] *1* Some topics I did not use "git revert" to revert them one-by-one; instead, I reverted a whole topic with one commit. - 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