On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, David Kastrup wrote: > Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > You're simply wrong. A ref isn't a name for a commit (the point of > > having a ref is that it doesn't persist in naming the same commit). A > > commit isn't a blob. If you start telling people complicated and wrong > > things, they're surely going to be confused. > > > > Git maintains history as a directed graph, with each commit pointing > > back at its history. Refs are the what holds the newest commits that > > nothing else points back to. If directed graphs aren't in your users' > > experience, you can put it this way: git maintains history like > > knitting, where each new stitch holds on to one or more previous > > stitches, and refs are the knitting needles that hold the ends where > > you're working (except that knitting is a lot wider than software > > development). gitk --all even provides the diagram you want to explain > > it. > > Complicated and right things are not much less confusing... > > > SVN branches are incredible confusing because they fail to distinguish > > the directory structure of the project's source tree from the > > arrangement of available latest versions. > > That is because there _is_ no difference. You just store different > versions in different places. What they are named is a convention, > nothing more, nothing less. No, there's a difference. When you get a tarball of a project that uses SVN, the root of the tarball isn't the root of the repository. It's the root of some directory within the repository. And if you ask for a tarball of some branch, it's from some different directory in the repository. Projects are not at all unaware that there are particular subdirectories in the repository structure which contain roots of versions, and above that, the directory structure doesn't refer to the structure of a project snapshot. Because SVN lacks a vital concept (graph-structured history), it uses the same implementation for two qualitatively different concepts. This is extremely confusing, and much more confusing than having a clean separation between the two concepts like git does. -Daniel *This .sig left intentionally blank* -- 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
