Problems with deleting tags?

[Richard Wilbur]

On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 12:45 AM, Vincent Ladeuil <v.ladeuil+lp at free.fr> wrote:
>>>>>> Richard Wilbur <richard.wilbur at gmail.com> writes:
>
>     > Do we improve things if we make tags version controlled?
>
> Slightly, we could give a better way to resolve conflicts and better
> control how tags propagate.

Sounds like it would be a useful thing for users if we can avoid the pitfalls.

>     > My understanding of tags is probably incomplete but it at least
>     > connotes creating a name for a snapshot of version information.
>
> It's just a name associated to a given revision (see 'bzr help tag').

Thanks for the clarification.  From perusing the .bzr/branch/tags file
it looks like we only have to record a single revision id per tag.
That's pretty straightforward.

[...]
> There is http://wiki.bazaar.canonical.com/Specs/Tagging which summarized
> some discussions, the mailing list archive may contain more.

Thanks for the link.  I read it and


> Personally, I'm not convinced anymore that tags should be version
> controlled as part of the branch itself.
>
> I've seen issues where "personal" tags where merged on a public branch
> as well as packaging tags coming back into the upstream branch (where
> they should have been kept separate).

If they were version controlled, couldn't you uncommit the merge and
redo without the tags from the offending branch?

In my reply to Steve I suggested, in essence, assuming all tags to be
"local" <=> "personal" unless specifically instructed otherwise.  My
suggested merge behaviour would be to only merge "global" tags unless
instructed to do otherwise with some merge flag like "local-tags".

> The spec above mentions that personal tags should not even be recorded
> in the branch, and what's the gain between a personal tag and just a
> branch ?

If we can overcome the downsides, it seems a personal tag or two in
order to simplify comparing changes takes a lot less space and time to
create than a new branch (or two) for a large repository.

> So following the KISS principle, I'm tempted to say that version
> controlled tags seems to be a solution in search of a problem ;)

I appreciate your appeal to the KISS principle.  I'm only interested
in version-controlled tags if we can solve problems without creating a
bunch more.

Vincent thank you for sharing some of the history of this discussion
and your own wisdom.