"named branches" vs "bookmarks" FUD
anatoly techtonik
techtonik at gmail.com
Fri Jan 3 15:33:37 UTC 2014
I feel fear when touching named branches in Mercurial.
I tried to track it down:
"Many people don’t like cluttering up changeset metadata with branch
names, especially if they’re small branches that are going to be
merged pretty quickly."
http://stevelosh.com/blog/2009/08/a-guide-to-branching-in-mercurial/#branching-with-named-branches
fear 1. cluttering changeset metadata
$ hg branch versions
marked working directory as branch versions
(branches are permanent and global, did you want a bookmark?)
fear 2. warning
uncertainty 1. permanent and global are bad
"it is almost never a good idea to use this facility for short-term
branching, since branches created this way are inherently “eternal”"
http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/BranchingExplained
pointed by
http://bryan-murdock.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-is-so-wrong-with-mercurials-named.html
fear 3. named branches are inherently "eternal"
fear 4. inherently "eternal" is evil
uncertainty 2. named branches are bad for short-term branching
So, looking at all these sources of *semi-official* FUD, I wonder -
are there some inherent problems with Mercurial internals that affect
performance or other aspects that make Mercurial developers impose
specific workflow (avoid short-term named branched) on its users?
Otherwise I don't see why people should be discouraged of using them.
Tagging series of changesets with meaningful names makes project history
better, not worse.
--
anatoly t.
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