git branch help?

[Matt McCutchen]

On Tue, 2010-08-03 at 08:10 +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> I'm not talking about intentional collisions, I'm talking about accidental 
> collisions, which ALL hash algorithms are vulnerable to, no matter how 
> strong. Hashes are inherently non-injective and mathematically CANNOT be 
> otherwise. Now the probability of an accidental collision is very low, but 
> it is not zero, so the algorithm is unreliable. And low probabilities add up 
> the more projects use DVCSes. Sooner or later some project will be hit by a 
> collision.

You might like this article:

http://valerieaurora.org/review/hash.html

I'm willing to accept the miniscule probability of a collision.  If you
aren't, I have some other windmills for you to tilt at.

> And the shorter the hash, the more likely a collision (exponentially!), so 
> the "abbreviated hashes" git uses are particularly collision-prone.

True; for that reason, I avoid using them for anything permanent.

> > The problems with CVS were amply explained there, but it's less clear to
> > me whether there were compelling reasons to choose git over (e.g.) SVN +
> > git-svn or the people involved just happened to like distributed version
> > control, as I do.
> 
> Sure they do, but the problem is that they're FORCING their preference onto 
> everyone

That's not strictly true: you're welcome to write svn-git.  But the
point is taken, and that's why I invited clarification as to the reasons
for choosing git.

> Sadly, more and more projects are getting infected by the git virus, KDE is 
> also moving to git, several other upstream projects already did. :-(

This is unsubstantiated flamebait.

-- 
Matt