[Monotone-devel] RE: cairo, git and mercurial

[Emile Snyder]

On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 13:46 +0300, Zakirov, Salikh wrote:
> >> ... git allows a more fully distributed
> >> model making it easier for users to pull (even speculatively with
> >> "fetch") from multiple sources, track them in the local repository
> >> as separate branches and merge when appropriate.
> 
> > This is something that's also possible with Monotone.  Mercurial makes
> > this possible, but it's much more of a "first class" operation in mt
> and
> > git.
> 
> >From the usability point of view, "first class" branches in Monotone
> has a disadvantage of being completely equal in rights. 
> You can't just pull from remote reposotiry and start browsing the code,
> you will also need to find out which branch is the "main" one.

This is true.  I can think of two things that might ease this pain
1. Extend the netsync protocol so that you can easily ask the server
what branches it's serving.
2. Also extend it so that it can show you "branch groups", where a
branch group is the set of branches which are attached to a single
connected DAG of revisions.  This would let you quickly see when there
were multiple projects (ie. no overlapping code) in one repository.

Would these changes make the co-equal first class branches more
appealing to you?

Apologies if this is straying to far afield from mercurial.  I've cc:ed
the monotone devel list, and discussion can continue there if it's more
appropriate.

-emile

> What's more, this full "first class" branch support can easily be
> overused
> by putting multiple unrelated projects in the same database. This does
> make harder to figure out what is what in the repository.
> 
> IMHO, the most usable solution is
> * have one designated unnamed main branch
> * allow arbitrary number of named branches in the same repository
> 
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