[Nix-dev] Why are there so many branches in the nixpkgs repo

[Bjørn Forsman]

On 22 February 2015 at 18:05, Rok Garbas <rok at garbas.si> wrote:
>> > However, we could rename dead branches to something like attic/<name>.
>>
>> Yes, that's sounds better than what we have now. Alternatively, we
>> could make a "historic" repo clone (like Nathan Bijnens suggests).
>> nixpkgs-historic? Then we have an option to clean up some less used
>> branches/tags in the mainline repo.
>>
>
> +1 on the "historic" (or "archive") clone where we would keep all history.
>
> this is usually normal way when working with any git/hg projects repos when
> they grow to "big" (to big in size of history) and its taking long time to do
> the initial clone. usually when developing a project you're only interested in
> last year or two of history at most.
>
> it is not that this must be done, but it would definetly not hurt anybody.
> history is not lost and main development repo becomes "lighter" to work with.

While I agree that such a history cut-off may be appropriate at some
point, I do not think we're there yet. And I did not mean to suggest
such a thing. I was just referring to the removal of old and unmerged
branches.

- Bjørn