Long-term storage of abandoned branches

Hi, in https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/12618#comment:37 Simon raises a question that I was wondering about as well: Where do we want to store feature branches that contain useful work that might be picked up some time later (maybe much later¹)? So far, I have left them as wip/foobar branches. Which works ok, but it clutters up the branch namespace, and “wip” is a lie. Maybe I should move the branch to archive/foobar, to make it clear that this is not something actively worked on? An alternative is having it in Phab only, where it is “more out of the way”, and there is commentary attached to it. Linked from the appropriate ticket, the code is as accessible as a git branch. But are we committed to keeping the Differential Revisions around for years? Also, if the branch contains many small commits, which presumably makes it more useful to whoever revives the project one day, it is easy to recover that from Phab? (I wonder because arc land squashes commits.) Greetings, Joachim ¹ this does happen, see https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/1600#comment:52 -- Joachim “nomeata” Breitner mail@joachim-breitner.de • https://www.joachim-breitner.de/ XMPP: nomeata@joachim-breitner.de • OpenPGP-Key: 0xF0FBF51F Debian Developer: nomeata@debian.org

"JB" == Joachim Breitner
writes:
JB> Maybe I should move the branch to archive/foobar, to make it clear that JB> this is not something actively worked on? As a side note: you could move them into a different ref spec entirely, which is not pulled by default when someone clone's or pull's. For example, you could store them under: refs/archives/foobar Which would require a pullspec to be added before someone can gain access to these archives: git config remote.origin.fetch '+refs/archives/*:refs/remotes/origin/archives/*' GitHub does something very similar with its pull requests, which are stored under a "pull" ref spec, and are not cloned by default, but can be accessed by adding the appropriate fetch attribute: +refs/pull/*:refs/remotes/origin/pr/* -- John Wiegley GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F http://newartisans.com 60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Hi, Am Montag, den 24.10.2016, 11:13 -0700 schrieb John Wiegley:
JB> Maybe I should move the branch to archive/foobar, to make it clear that JB> this is not something actively worked on?
As a side note: you could move them into a different ref spec entirely, which is not pulled by default when someone clone's or pull's.
I know about the possibility, but I think that would simply be too undiscoverable then. Greetings, Joachim -- Joachim “nomeata” Breitner mail@joachim-breitner.de • https://www.joachim-breitner.de/ XMPP: nomeata@joachim-breitner.de • OpenPGP-Key: 0xF0FBF51F Debian Developer: nomeata@debian.org
participants (2)
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Joachim Breitner
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John Wiegley