[issue741] poor indication of current branch, "tip" is misleading

[Charles Samuels]

New submission from Charles Samuels <charles at vmware.com>:

If you use branches, "tip" doesn't really help you because knowing the "most 
recently made change" is never helpful, as you would rather know the parent of 
the current head.

When you are using branches, "tip" could be misleading to newbies as they might 
be led to believe that the "tip" will be the parent of the current head/branch.

A related problem is that "tip" seems to have so much significance in 
documentation and UI.

Here's a few examples:
- hg heads shows the "tip" tag for the most recently made change (how is this 
helful?). In non-branchy development, this is going to be the same as "default"
- hgk shows "tip" in a bright yellow box at the top of the list, even though it 
will always be at the top of the list anyway, afaik
- hgk doesn't list the name of the branch, or even what the default branch is 
(see issue 740)
- `hg tip` serves absolutely no purpose when using branches, and could really 
cause some confusion if a person accustomed to not using branches types it in, 
assuming that it will give them the parent of the next commit they make

I think "default" should be used to replace "tip" where it makes sense, 
and "tip" should be redefined to mean "the parent of the next change" as 
opposed to "the last change". (No, I don't expect /this/ suggestion to be used, 
but I'm sure there's something that can resolve these problems)

Thanks

----------
messages: 4007
nosy: charles
priority: bug
status: unread
title: poor indication of current branch, "tip" is misleading

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Mercurial issue tracker <mercurial-bugs at selenic.com>
<http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/bts/issue741>
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