Description Mathias Kinzler 2011-10-12 05:17:00 EDT

I had a discussion with an SAP colleague today who stumbled across the new 1.1 feature that makes more refs visible in the History View, e.g. ORIG_HEAD and FETCH_HEAD. While these are certainly helpful for the super user, they tend to confuse the "normal" user and make the History View harder to use.

For example, the user has selected "Show All Branches and Tags" in the History View and wants to see

O Feature Branch HEAD Develop some feature
|
O origin/master Some previously developed feature

but instead gets

O ORIG_HEAD Some commit before a rebase was done
|
O Some other commit
|
| O Feature Branch HEAD Develop some feature
| |
| O origin/master Some previously developed feature
......
\ |
  O

I think it's a very valid use case to check the "Show all branches and tags" so that the origin/master is visible even if there is no local branch pointing to it. Showing additional refs depending on the state of the button does not conform with the semantics suggested by it's text (HEAD is special in that it marks the "current" branch which is quite important information).

In order to satisfy the super user, I would suggest a checkbox on the "Views" preference page that is unchecked by default with the semantics "Show additional refs" that the super user can select. The semantics could also be "Show additional refs if Show all branches and tags is selected", but I guess this would be too confusing. There should also a toggle menu entry in the view's menu under Show > Additional Refs (similar to Show > Notes History.

HEAD should probably be shown always.