Question regarding dist-git aesthetics with branches

[Roland McGrath]

> My first idea would be for fedpkg to do something similar to the
> following when trying to find out the target to build for:
> 
>   0. If "--target F-13" is given, use that as target.
>      If not, continue.
>   1. Determine the current git branch ($origbranch=$curbranch).
>   2. Check 'git config "branch.$curbranch.fedora-target"'.
>      If set, use that as target. If not, continue.
>   3. Check whether "$curbranch" starts with "F-13/". If so,
>      use "F-13" as the target. If not, continue.
>   4. Check what branch "$curbranch" is tracking.
>      If it tracks one, set curbranch to that branch and
>      go to step 2.
>      Otherwise, bail out and ask for --target or
>      'git config branch.$origbranch.fedora-target' to be set.

I'd suggested something just about like this.  Jesse is concerned by the
fact that some local state (the .git/config file in your local repo)
affects this.  I think the fear is that you could easily manage to
confuse yourself about what magic cookie is driving your "dwim" build
target behavior, so another developer you're collaborating with might
end up having a local git repo you both looks the same as yours, but
builds pick a different target.

My first suggestion was not to have the magical leading "F-<n>/"
matching at all.  Rather, just have fedpkg front-end commands set and
show the state of branch.SOMEBRANCH.fedora-target settings.  e.g.,
'fedpkg checkout foo' would both do 'git checkout foo' and set the
branch.foo.fedora-target automatically.

I can see both sides of Jesse's point about the extra locally-confusable
magic setting here.


Thanks,
Roland