Re: Referring to revisions in the git future.

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, David.

On Sat, Nov 01, 2014 at 12:57:13PM +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden> writes:

> > Yes, that sounds like an excellent reason for using hashes.  But for many
> > uses, a revision number is better.  bzr has them both.  git doesn't.

> Git has "git describe" for getting a sequence-based decription.  It's
> used for informal version numbers, like for a self-compiled git as
> opposed to an official release:

> address@hidden:/usr/local/tmp/lilypond$ git --version
> git version 1.9.1
> address@hidden:/usr/local/tmp/lilypond$ ../git/git --version
> git version 2.1.0.rc2.3.g67de23d.dirty
> address@hidden:/usr/local/tmp/lilypond$ cd ../git
> address@hidden:/usr/local/tmp/git$ git describe
> v2.1.0-rc2-3-g67de23d

Maybe I'm blind, but I can't see anything like a sequential version
number in that string.

> Nobody uses it in Email communication because there are no sufficient
> upsides to it.

Is it of any use for anything?  Can you use it as input to a git command,
for example?

> If you want to talk about a commit, you'll talk about

[ .... ]

> I am not really interested in continuing this silliness since it is
> totally irrelevant, anyway.  If you want to change Git's operation and
> nomenclature, feel free to make your point on the Git developer list and
> tell everybody there they are doing it all wrong.

I've never been anywhere near that list, but I'd be willing to bet an
awful lot of money that this point has been raised many times on that
list, each time being dismissively dismissed with religious fervour.

There are certainly workarounds for the lack of version numbers in git,
as you and others have pointed out.  I expect their necessity will bring
me to hate the program.  Such is life.

> -- 
> David Kastrup

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).