On 13 May 2013 23:42:46 -0600 "Andy Bradford" <amb-fos...@bradfords.org> wrote:
> > That is, it's backwards: you first do some work, then decide to > > commit and decide this commit should start its own branch > > rather than continuing the current one, so you create that > > new branch while committing. > > Not exactly backwards, but more of a convenience. If you > suddenly discover that your changes should not yet go into the > trunk, you can branch at the moment of the commit. This makes > branching extremely easy to accomplish and less of a hassle to get > the changes committed without breaking the rest of the sources. > With other VCS you would have to go through a few more girations > to get your newly changed files committed at the *right* location. Changing a branch "under a dirty work tree" is achieved with a single command in Git and two commands in Subversion; not sure about less mainstream VCSes. But I digress. If memory serves me right, initially Fossil only supported creation of a branch when committing, and "explicit" branch creation has been added afterwards, per user requests. I would say this is not about convenience but rather about different mindsets: some people just don't "feel right" when they can't start a new line of by *first* creating a branch to work on. People with a different mindset are fine with first coding something and then deciding where this should go. There definitely was at least one thread on this list which discussed this matter, with Richard Hipp chiming in and explaining he has the mindert of the latter kind ;-) Of course, the convenience argument still holds, just not when it comes to history of implementation of these features. And if, again, memory serves me right, explicit creation of a branch works by creating an empty commit on that newborn branch -- specifically for the purpose of attaching the necessary tags to it, which are to designate the branch. I'm inclined to think this hints at that such a mode of operation wasn't initially envisioned. _______________________________________________ fossil-users mailing list fossil-users@lists.fossil-scm.org http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users
