Re: VCS comparison table

Hi,

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006, Jakub Narebski wrote:

Linus Torvalds wrote:

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About "checkouts", i.e. working directories with repository elsewhere:
you can use GIT_DIR environmental variable or "git --git-dir" option,
or symlinks, and if Nguyen Thai Ngoc D proposal to have .gitdir/.git
"symref"-like file to point to repository passes, we can use that.

It sounds like the .gitdir/.git proposal would give Git "checkouts", by
our meaning of the term.

Well, in the git world, it's really just one shared repository that has 
separate branch-namespaces, and separate working trees (aka "checkouts"). 
So yes, it probably matches what bazaar would call a checkout.

Almost nobody seems to actually use it that way in git - it's mostly more 
efficient to just have five different branches in the same working tree, 
and switch between them. When you switch between branches in git, git only 
rewrites the part of your working tree that actually changed, so switching 
is extremely efficient even with a large repo. 

Unless you have branch(es) with totally different contents, like git.git
'todo' branch.

But I _do_ work with it! I just don't need to "checkout" it! Example:

git -p cat-file -p todo:TODO

(How about making git-cat be a short cuut to "git -p cat-file -p"?)

quoted

So there is seldom any real need or reason to actually have multiple 
checkouts. But it certainly _works_.

But without .git being either symlink, or .git/.gitdir "symref"-link,
you have to remember what to ser GIT_DIR to, or parameter for --git-dir
option.

You'd just use alternates for that.

But as Linus mentioned in another email, you mostly can use the _same_ 
working directory. If you want to work on another branch, which is not all 
that different from the current branch (say, you have a bug fix branch on 
top of an upstream branch), you just _switch_ to it. Git recognizes those 
files which are changed, and updates only these. Therefore, if you have 
something like a Makefile system to build the project, you actually save 
(compile) time as compared to the multiple-checkout scenario.

I use this system a lot, since I maintain a few bugfixes for a few 
projects until the bugfixes are applied upstream. BTW the 
multiple-branches-in-one-working-directory workflow was propagated by Jeff 
a long time ago, and it really changed my way of working. Thanks, Jeff!

Ciao,
Dscho