Re: Please don't use revision numbers on commit messages (and elsewhere).

[Uday S Reddy <u.s.reddy@cs.bham.ac.uk>]

On 4/1/2011 2:59 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> That's only because so far, people don't lose push races often enough
> for it to matter.  Commits that from your point of view are on the
> mainline really are on local branches until you succeed in pushing.
> If you use a bound branch, you're saved from that, true (this is not
> entirely trivial, but I'm pretty sure in practice it will be true).
> But bound branches suck for anything much bigger than a typo fix.

I am still trying to understand how bad this problem is.

If the cross-references are to revision numbers in the trunk or to other 
revisions in the local branch, then things are clear, right?  For 
example, a reference to revision 1123 in a branch labeled 1121.2.x has 
to be 1121.2.2.

When references have to be made to branches other than the trunk or the 
local branch then, yes, using revision ids would be better.  But, why 
require them for everything?

The "push race" affects things only if one is assuming that the current 
branch will get committed at a particular place on the trunk?  Well, why 
would any one assume such a thing anyway?

Cheers,
Uday