[Dev] [RFC] Splitting abslibre.git into branches

Luke Shumaker lukeshu at lukeshu.com
Wed May 24 03:04:49 GMT 2017


On Tue, 23 May 2017 01:52:22 -0400,
Andreas Grapentin wrote:
> branches in git are meant for tracking variations of the same content,
> not different content entirely. directories are the right tool for that.

That's... not true.  Branches are "meant" for tracking independent
trees.  If the branch heads don't have a common ancestor, then there
is no implication that they are "tracking variations of the same
content."  Meanwhile, a git "tree" (or as you say, "directory") is for
a set of files that have a relation to eachother and are developed
together.  For the most part, packages are updated independently of
eachother.

Having each package in its own branch is very similar to having each
package in its own separate repository.

> some more tangible points:
> 
>   - I imagine having to switch branches every time I need to compare two
>     packages could become very tedious very quickly.

    git diff packageA package b

>   - it might become more difficult to review the list of recent changes
>     to all packages - currently a `git log` shows all history

    git log --all --date-order

>                                                                while a
>     `git log path/to/package/` shows the changes for a given package

    git log packagebase --

> what would be the benefits of the proposed change?

For one, grabbing packages from AUR without losing history or the
ability to merge.

Oh, and the tedium of mirroring changes between related packages could
be reduced to a simple `git merge`.  Copying changes from `bbswitch`
to `bbswitch-lts` and such would suddenly be less painful.

----

Similar to Dave's new `asp` tool that replaces `abs`, we would have a
tool for managing checkouts of multiple packages.

Another possibility would be having a 'master' branch that includes
each of the package branches as submodules.  But this would require
additional tooling, as the git submodule tooling is awful.

-- 
Happy hacking,
~ Luke Shumaker



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