[Remind-Fans] Git branches (was Re: First release candidate of Remind 03.03.12)

[taekoocair at wilsonb.com]

Branches are moving targets, in a sense. The code state they can point to can
change at any time as the branch accumulates commits. That doesn't really make
sense for a release, which should point to the codebase at a specific commit.
That's where git tags come in. Tags are essentially immutable pointers to git
commits.

It looks ilke Dianne has tagged this release candidate as 03.03.12-RC1, which
you can checkout just like a branch. To see the entire (voluminous!) list of
tags, check out `git tag`.


In fact tags are just tag objects sitting in the git object store! If you're
really interested, play with the `git cat-file` command to see the contents of
this object: i.e. git cat-file -p 03.03.12-RC1. You can see it contains a
reference to the commit where Dianne bumped the version number.

Happy hacking!


Justin Alcorn via Remind-fans <remind-fans at lists.skoll.ca> wrote:
> Makes sense. I clone the repository and I figured I could just switch to
> the rc branch and compile, and was scratching my head when it wasn't there.
> 
> On Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 6:15 PM Dianne Skoll via Remind-fans <
> remind-fans at lists.skoll.ca> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 22 Jan 2022 12:53:53 -0500
> > Justin Alcorn <justin at jalcorn.net> wrote:
> >
> > > I noticed you don't put the rc on a branch.  Just curious, since I
> > > got out of development before git (hell, before CVS) and I'm still
> > > learning git and modern development techniques - why is that?
> >
> > Well, Remind has only one developer, so I don't really see much point
> > in branching.
> >
> > In my day job and in other situations where I work with other developers,
> > we make heavy use of feature and bugfix branches.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Dianne.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Remind-fans mailing list
> > Remind-fans at lists.skoll.ca
> > https://dianne.skoll.ca/mailman/listinfo/remind-fans
> > Remind is at https://dianne.skoll.ca/projects/remind/
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Remind-fans mailing list
> Remind-fans at lists.skoll.ca
> https://dianne.skoll.ca/mailman/listinfo/remind-fans
> Remind is at https://dianne.skoll.ca/projects/remind/