I went ahead and started looking at the GIT tutorials. First, my original assertion was incorrect - if handled correctly, FAQ DID change based on which branch was active.
Based on this tutorial (http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/tutorial.html), here is what worked for me: git branch experimental git branch git checkout experimental edit FAQ git commit -a (adds any modified files, but not new files) At this point, looking in the FAQ file will still show changes, because we are in the experimental branch. If we then switch back: git checkout master and look at FAQ again, it is in its original form. (SWEEEET!) No directory changing, nothing - the same tree on the file system is now in its original state. That's NICE. The merge command can bring the FAQ changes from the branch to the original. If files are added in a branch and left untracked, they will remain present when switching to another branch. However, if they ARE tracked switching branches will hide them. (Makes sense, I guess - until git knows better untracked files are just random junk in the tree.) git status lets you know what is present and untracked, and looks like it might be a very handy way to look for mistakes in a "make clean" type script :-). Also, different build systems could be tested with the same "base" code simply by turning one branch on or off, and clearing out any untracked files. Wow! I'm impressed. I can also see where this would get tough with very large diffs, but that's a problem no revision control system can solve because the differences ARE intrinsically major and must be resolved by human beings. Clearly there are details to learn, and perhaps a page detailing common scenarios for Axiom developers would be helpful (say, for example, pulling Waldek's change set into my git repository as "wh-sandbox" branch without accidentally stomping on anything in mine) but I have to say I find this very appealing. The lack of duplication of file storage is VERY impressive (my hard disk is not sufficiently large that storing many trees of Axiom is a trivial matter) and the tools look easy enough to use. I'm convinced Tim - I'll sign up for Git as the way to go. Cheers, CY ____________________________________________________________________________________Looking for a deal? Find great prices on flights and hotels with Yahoo! FareChase. http://farechase.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
