git and bzr

[Sean]

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 01:01:46 +0100
Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling at webdrake.net> wrote:

> First off a really dumb one: how do I identify myself to git, i.e. give
> it a name and email address?  Currently it uses my system identity,
> My Name <username at computer.(none)>.  I haven't found any equivalent of
> the bzr whoami command.

Assuming you have a recent version of git, then:

$ git repo-config --global user.email "you at email.com"
$ git repo-config --global user.name "Your Name"

Will setup a ~/.gitconfig in your home directory; these settings
will apply in any repo you use.  Drop the "--global" to set them
per repo.

> With this in mind, is there any significance to the "master" branch (is
> it intended e.g. to indicate a git repository's "stable" version
> according to the owner?), or is this just a convenient default name?
> Could I delete or rename it?  Using bzr I would normally give the
> central branch(*) the name of the project.

It's just a common convention and carries no special significance;
rename away!

> Any other useful comments that can be made to a bzr user about working
> with this difference, positive or negative aspects of it?

Don't be afraid to git-clone your local repo, especially with the -l
and -s options.  That will get you a separate repo/working directory
while not taking up much extra disk space (objects from your first
repo will be shared with the second).

Once you get comfortable with multiple branches in a single repo/
working directory, it often is much better than the alternatives.
But the above gives you the option to work either way.

> Next question ... one of the reasons I started seriously thinking about
> git was that in the VCS comparison discussion, it was noted that git is
> a lot more flexible than bzr in terms of how it can track data (e.g. the
> git pickaxe command, although I understand that's not in the released
> version [1.4.4.1] yet?).  A frustration with bzr is that pulling or
> merging patches from another branch or repo requires them to share the
> same HEAD.  Is this a requirement in git or can I say, "Hey, I like that
> particular function in project XXX, I'm going to pull that individual
> bit of code and its development history into project YYY"?

The Git cherry-pick command lets you grab specific commits from
other branches in your repo.  But cherry-pick works at the commit
level, there is no easy way to grab a single function for instance
and merge just its history into another branch.

However, you can merge an entire separate project into yours even
though they don't share a base commit.  This has been done several
times in the history of Git itself. For instance you can see two
separate "initial" commits in the Git repo with a command like
"gitk README gitk" which gives a graphical history of the "gitk"
and "README" files and shows each started life in a separate
initial commit.  Use "git show 5569b" to see Linus bragging on
this first separate-project-merge and give some more details.
 
> Last off (for now, I'm sure I'll think of more): is there any easy (or
> difficult) way to effectively import version history from a bzr
> repository, and vice versa?

Don't think a direct bridge between the two has been written yet.

Cheers,
Sean