Bookmarks in core?

Matt Mackall mpm at selenic.com
Wed Dec 1 13:03:52 CST 2010


On Wed, 2010-12-01 at 09:13 +0100, Martin Geisler wrote:
> Augie Fackler <durin42 at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > On Nov 30, 2010, at 5:10 PM, Didly Bom wrote:
> >
> >> As a user it'd be nice if bookmarks were integrated into core and
> >> makes it easier to share your bookmarks, so this gets a +1 from me.
> >> 
> >> Actually I like the idea of somehow reducing the gap between tags and
> >> bookmarks, especially if that meant that we could get rid of all
> >> those ugly "extra commits" that are introduced when you add a non
> >> local tag (yuk!).
> >
> > Those "ugly" extra commits are here to stay. I can't think of any
> > reasonable way to hide them that wouldn't grossly violate backwards
> > compatibility (I even *like* them, although taht probably puts me in
> > the minority.)
> >
> > If anything, I think it makes sense to *increase* the difference
> > between bookmarks and tags (make the notion of a bookmark detached
> > somewhat from the notion of a tag, so that `hg tags` wouldn't print
> > bookmarks as well as tags.
> 
> If one could mark a bookmark as fixed, then it would behave like a tag,

Ugh, no, not this again.


Look, here are the basic properties of any sensible implementation of
tags:

a) in history (auditable, signable, etc.)
b) mutable
c) can be applied after the commit they refer to

You -really- want ALL these properties for tags on a real project, but
most critically, you want (a). If you decide to use bookmarks instead of
tags, and someone accidentally nukes one (or even just moves it), you'll
have no record of that happening and no way to get it back.

If you don't think tags need to be in history, then frankly I'm not sure
why you're even bothering with version control, because you've missed
the point.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.




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