Subject: Re: [PATCH] glossary: improve "branch" definition

From: Sergey Organov <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 02:01:24 +0300

Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> writes:

> Sergey Organov <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> The old phrasing is at least questionable, if not wrong, as there are
>> a lot of branches out there that didn't see active development for
>> years, yet they are still branches, ready to become active again any
>> time.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Sergey Organov <[email-masked]>
>> ---
>>  Documentation/glossary-content.txt | 2 +-
>>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/Documentation/glossary-content.txt b/Documentation/glossary-content.txt
>> index 090c888335d3..8bf198e72771 100644
>> --- a/Documentation/glossary-content.txt
>> +++ b/Documentation/glossary-content.txt
>> @@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
>>  	Untyped <<def_object,object>>, e.g. the contents of a file.
>>  
>>  [[def_branch]]branch::
>> -	A "branch" is an active line of development.  The most recent
>> +	A "branch" is a separate line of development.  The most recent
>
> A dormant branch cannot be an "active" line of development, so in
> that sense, the original is wrong.  The description is better
> without the adjective "active".
>
> But do we need to say "a separate line of development", instead of
> just "a line of development"?  What is "a line of development" that
> is not separate?  What extra pieces of information are we trying to
> convey by having the word "separate" there?

I think it tries to convey a notion that 2 branches represent separate
lines of development. I.e., that the whole purpose of branching is to
provide support for independent, or parallel, or /separate/ lines of
development.

I'm not going to insist on the exact wording though, -- just wanted to
bring attention to the issue, and "separate" was somehow the first word
that came to mind when I edited the text.

As an after-thought, I'd probably add that branch in Git is represented
by a chain of commits, and then I'd refer to most recent commit of the
chain, instead of most recent commit on the branch. That'd make
definition more formal and precise. Makes sense?

-- Sergey Organov