Why are tags in commits

[Kastner Masilko, Friedrich]

> From: mercurial-bounces at selenic.com [mailto:mercurial-bounces at selenic.com] On Behalf Of Christophe HENRY
> 
> As you know, when I tag a changeset it modifies the file "/.hgtags"
> and commits. I can't see the whole picture. Say I update to a branch
> where the tag should not exist because the tag existed after the
> changeset. The tag still exists. Even if I go to -1 changeset. I know
> the information remains inside ".hg".

There is much information about how Mercurial's global tags work. A good start is here: http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Tag .
 
> As I understand that the tags should be available wherever I am, why
> not manage them as the bookmarks? Please correct me, but as tags are a
> global property of a repository, they should not be dependent on
> commits. Or not?

Bookmarks lack one important feature of global tags: history. You don't know who tagged what when with them. With global tags, you always see how a certain tag came into existence.

While the design of Mercurial's tagging mechanism could be discussed based on today's available push-key infrastructure, I doubt that an equivalent concept - with all the features and the same maturity - could be carved out with yet another meta-data layer easily.

What are your problems with it? Is something not working as expected?

regards,
Fritz



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