Re: Why aren't tag refs namespaced?

[Nathan Gray <n8gray@n8gray.org>]

CC'ing the list

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Phil Hord <phil.hord@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Nathan Gray <n8gray@n8gray.org> wrote:
>> Namespacing works really well for branch refs.  I know that
>> remotes/origin/master is origin's master branch.  I may or may not
>> have a master branch, and it may or may not have anything in common
>> with origin's.  Our repositories are independent, after all, so it
>> makes sense that our refs would live in different namespaces.
>>
>> So why is it that tag refs don't follow this model?
>
> I expect the simple answer is that no one has been motivated to create
> such a mode.
>
>
>> Why is my
>> "best-commit-ever" tag assumed to be the same as origin's?  Given a
>> ref in refs/tags it's unclear if the ref is public, private, on origin
>> or not on origin.  Will pushing my tags create anything new or not?
>> Who knows?  Compare this to branches, where the same questions are
>> easy to answer thanks to namespacing.
>>
>> OTOH, am I just not "getting it?"  I've been using git for about 4
>> years now and I feel like I know it pretty well but it's possible I'm
>> just misunderstanding things.
>
>
> Tags are presumed not to move, so there's no point in having a remote
> tag which you follow with your local tag.  In that sense, they are
> fundamentally different from branches.  Also, tags are not pushed by
> default, though they are fetched if they're on branches you are
> fetching.

All that is true, but...

> On the other hand, it does invite namespace collisions if
> you pull tags from a remote whilst having local tags and no
> agreed-upon convention.

Exactly!  Imagine tracking 5 different forks of the same project on
GitHub.  They can't be expected to coordinate their tagging
conventions.

> But perhaps a convention is what you need.  Suppose you name all your
> local tags "refs/tags/n8gray/best-commit-ever"?  Or maybe you can 'git
> fetch origin "refs/tags/*:refs/tags/origin/*"'.

That could probably be made to work, but it requires a fair bit of
effort to keep clean.  Plus you have to make sure you never
accidentally use the built-in tag pushing/pulling stuff or it all
falls apart.

Cheers,
-n8

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