Re: Re: Unify annotated and non-annotated tags

[anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Dec 3, 2017 at 1:25 AM, Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org> wrote:
> From: "anatoly techtonik" <techtonik@gmail.com>
>
> comment at end - Philip
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 24, 2017 at 1:24 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
> <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 24, 2017 at 10:52 AM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 23, 2017 at 6:08 PM, Randall S. Becker
>>> <rsbecker@nexbridge.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 2017-11-23 02:31 (GMT-05:00) anatoly techtonik wrote
>>>>>
>>>>> Subject: Re: Unify annotated and non-annotated tags
>>>>> On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 5:06 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Igor Djordjevic <igor.d.djordjevic@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If you would like to mimic output of "git show-ref", repeating
>>>>>>> commits for each tag pointing to it and showing full tag name as
>>>>>>> well, you could do something like this, for example:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>       for tag in $(git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/tags)
>>>>>>>       do
>>>>>>>               printf '%s %s\n' "$(git rev-parse $tag^0)" "$tag"
>>>>>>>       done
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hope that helps a bit.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you use for-each-ref's --format option, you could do something
>>>>>> like (pardon a long line):
>>>>>>
>>>>>> git for-each-ref
>>>>>> --format='%(if)%(*objectname)%(then)%(*objectname)%(else)%(objectname)%(end)
>>>>>> %(refname)' refs/tags
>>>>>>
>>>>>> without any loop, I would think.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks. That helps.
>>>>> So my proposal is to get rid of non-annotated tags, so to get all
>>>>> tags with commits that they point to, one would use:
>>>>> git for-each-ref --format='%(*objectname) %(refname)' refs/tags>
>>>>> For so-called non-annotated tags just leave the message empty.
>>>>> I don't see why anyone would need non-annotated tags though.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I have seen non-annotated tags used in automations (not necessarily well
>>>> written ones) that create tags as a record of automation activity. I am not
>>>> sure we should be writing off the concept of unannotated tags entirely. This
>>>> may cause breakage based on existing expectations of how tags work at
>>>> present. My take is that tags should include whodunnit, even if it's just
>>>> the version of the automation being used, but I don't always get to have my
>>>> wishes fulfilled. In essence, whatever behaviour a non-annotated tag has now
>>>> may need to be emulated in future even if reconciliation happens. An option
>>>> to preserve empty tag compatibility with pre-2.16 behaviour, perhaps? Sadly,
>>>> I cannot supply examples of this usage based on a human memory page-fault
>>>> and NDAs.
>>>
>>>
>>> Are there any windows for backward compatibility breaks, or git is
>>> doomed to preserve it forever?
>>> Automation without support won't survive for long, and people who rely
>>> on that, like Chromium team, usually hard set the version used.
>>
>>
>> Git is not doomed to preserve anything forever. We've gradually broken
>> backwards compatibility for a few core things like these.
>>
>> However, just as a bystander reading this thread I haven't seen any
>> compelling reason for why these should be removed. You initially had
>> questions about how to extract info about them, which you got answers
>> to.
>>
>> So what reasons remain for why they need to be removed?
>
>
> To reduce complexity and prior knowledge when dealing with Git tags.
>
> For example, http://readthedocs.io/ site contains a lot of broken
> "Edit on GitHub" links, for example -
> http://git-memo.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
>
> And it appeared that the reason for that is discrepancy between git
> annotated and non-annotated tags. The pull request that fixes the issue
> after it was researched and understood is simple
> https://github.com/rtfd/readthedocs.org/pull/3302
>
> However, while looking through linked issues and PRs, one can try to
> imagine how many days it took for people to come up with the solution,
> which came from this thread.
> --
> anatoly t.
>
>>>>>>>>
>
> So if I understand correctly, the hope is that `git show-ref --tags` could
> get an alternate option `--all-tags` [proper option name required...] such
> that the user would not have to develop the rather over the complicated
> expression that used a newish capability of a different command.
>
> Would that be right?

That's correct.

> Or at least update the man page docs to clarify the annotated vs
> non-annotated tags issue (many SO questions!).

Are there stats how many users read man pages and what is their
reading session length? I mean docs may not help much,

> And indicate if the --dereference and/or --hash options would do the trick!
> - maybe the "^{}" appended would be part of the problem (and need that new
> option "--objectreference" ).

--dereference would work if it didn't require extra processing.
It is hard to think about other option name that would give
desired result.

-- 
anatoly t.