Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Some issues

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Lord <address@hidden> writes:

    Tom> I've never heard of a "HEAD branch", though.

    >> It's used by the FreeBSD folks, apprently.  After all, it's
    >> just a CVS implementation detail that HEAD is not a branch. 8-)

    Tom> No, these are very different concepts.  Perhaps you are
    Tom> saying that FreeBSD sometimes uses the string "HEAD" the way
    Tom> that other people sometimes use the string "mainline", or
    Tom> "stable", or "development", or "experimental".

ISTR in CVS "HEAD" always refers to the head of the trunk (the nameless
branch that you revert to with "cvs update -A").  The head of other
branches is referred to by the name of the branch, and you need to do
an explicit "cvs tag" to retain a name for the branch point.

So I can see what Florian's saying, although I hope he won't insist on
it.  ;-)

My personal preference would be to deprecate "HEAD" in favor of "tip"
or "leaf" (or somesuch), since the unqualified "HEAD" so strongly
implies "the tip of the _One True_ branch", but as we know it's not
obvious what the "right" branch is once you have flexible branching
technology.

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