Subject: Re: Git commit generation numbers

From: Ted Ts'o <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:42:11 -0400

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 09:44:21AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> So I would like to repeat: I think our commit-date based hack has been
> pretty successful. We've lived with it for years and years. Even the
> "let's try to fix it by adding slop" code is from three years ago
> (commit 7d004199d1), which means that for three years we never really
> saw any serious problems. I forget what problem we actually did see -
> I have this dim memory of it being Ted that had problems with a merge
> because git picked a crap merge base, but that may just be my
> Alzheimer's speaking.

My original main issue was simply that "git tag --contains" and "git
branch --contains" was either (a) incorrect, or (b) slower than
popping up gitk and pulling the information out of the GUI.  The
reason for (b) is because of gitk.cache.

Maybe the answer then is creating a command-line tool (it doesn't have to
be in "core" of git) which just pulls the dammned information out of
gitk.cache....

(Yes, it's gross, but I'm not worrying about the long-term
architecture of git or anything high-falutin' like that.  I'm just a
poor dumb user who just wants git tag --contains and git branch
--contains to be fast and accurate...)

						- Ted