[Biopython-dev] history on github - where are the tags?

[Peter]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Peter <biopython at maubp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 11:58 PM, Bartek Wilczynski wrote:
>> For the tags, they were not pushed to github before, because I didn't
>> know I need to specifically do it qith git push --tags.
>
> ...
> They also show up in github (near the top, drop down menu next to
> branches) and in gitx (and I assume other GUI clients).

Bartek fixed the tag issue, but I don't like how they show up in
github.

The most visible sign of the tags is in the downloads menu which
lets you get a source code bundle using that tag.  If we could turn
that off I would - these bundles won't include the compiled PDF
and HTML documentation, and could cause confusion when
people have a problems and they just say they "downloaded
version X from the website".

My main concern is the tags don't appear to be shown when
looking at the history in github, which is the main reason I
wanted them in the first place. e.g.
http://github.com/biopython/biopython/commits/master/Bio/Blast/NCBIXML.py

Compare this to ViewCVS, which shows the tags in the history:
http://cvs.biopython.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/viewcvs.cgi/biopython/Bio/Blast/NCBIXML.py?cvsroot=biopython

I find this very handy for investigating bugs, and much easier
than messing about at the command line with CVS.  The fact
that I can do this from almost any networked computer in the
world is great for triaging bugs or responding to emails - it lets
me look back over the history with our releases clearly labeled.
So right now, the github history is a big step backwards for me.

As an alternative, I had a quick look at GitX (on the Mac) from
the GUI, they don't seem to have a history-of-one-file view, just
a global history.   For how I have been using ViewCVS's history,
this is useless. However, interesting for a GUI tool, they have
a command line option which sort of does this, e.g.
$ gitx -- Bio/Blast/NCBIXML.py
Then the history shows all changes affecting the given file (or
path), but as you might guess from git's commit based design,
you also get shown other changes made in the same commit.
This is kind of nice, just different.  But still no tags visible :(

Peter

P.S. Tags aside, the github history view hasn't been working
100% for me, e.g.
http://support.github.com/discussions/site/487-commit-history-sorry-this-commit-log-is-taking-too-long-to-generate