Pre-built Toolchains: Unclear "master" version

[Chealer]

The GCC / mingw-w64 Version column of the table in the Pre-built Toolchains page contains "master" in the value for 3 rows. Yet MinGW-w64 has no "master" version; it has a master branch. @lhmouse clarified in ticket #92 that the value "master" does refer to the master branch.

It would be clearer to write "Unknown" or "Variable" instead of master.

By the way, it would be clearer to split the column into 3:

1. MinGW-w64 Version
2. GCC Version
3. Clang Version

🅭🄍

[lhmouse]

Certainly master stands for a version; it indicates an indeterminate version. In Git you can do git checkout master to switch to master branch, or git checkout v13.0.0 to switch to a tag (to detached state i.e. not on any branch).

The GCC version field is indeed confusing, especially for MSYS2 which provides both GCC and Clang.

[Chealer]

Most people would not consider MinGW-w64 as a version. But there are 2 issues with the affected rows:

1. Imprecision
2. Lack of clarity.

This ticket tracks the latter. People who do not know MinGW-w64 cannot know what "master" means, unless they guess from knowledge of Git jargon.

[lhmouse]

Names other than trunk and master would be alpha, development or head. Except that head is also a Git jargon for current branch (not strictly correct for detached HEAD though), none of the others make more sense to me.

[Chealer]

"head" has 2 senses in Git, and another sense in other VCSs. Although they are related, that makes the term extremely confusing and inappropriate in this context. Even in Git, it does not mean current branch.

There is no need for the value to be a name. It could be a version “number”, an adjective, or even a question mark. If the master branch is not stabilized prior to branching, I guess "Alpha" would be just as reasonable as "Variable" or "Unknown".

[lhmouse]

"head" has 2 senses in Git, and another sense in other VCSs. Although they are related, that makes the term extremely confusing and inappropriate in this context. Even in Git, it does not mean current branch.

head doesn't, but HEAD does. In the context of a remote repository, it indicates the default branch, so it is the same as master but more confusing.

There is no need for the value to be a name. It could be a version “number”, an adjective, or even a question mark. If the master branch is not stabilized prior to branching, I guess "Alpha" would be just as reasonable as "Variable" or "Unknown".

Do you mean that someone rolls a die to determine which commit/revision they build?

[Chealer]

"head" has 2 senses in Git, and another sense in other VCSs. Although they are related, that makes the term extremely confusing and inappropriate in this context. Even in Git, it does not mean current branch.

head doesn't, but HEAD does. In the context of a remote repository, it indicates the default branch, so it is the same as master but more confusing.

HEAD does not mean the default branch, no. HEAD is checkout-dependent. In a given checkout, it can point to the head of the default branch, but that can change without any change to the repository. As usual with Git, it’s not simple, but the best definition I find is “HEAD is you”.

There is no need for the value to be a name. It could be a version “number”, an adjective, or even a question mark. If the master branch is not stabilized prior to branching, I guess "Alpha" would be just as reasonable as "Variable" or "Unknown".

Do you mean that someone rolls a die to determine which commit/revision they build?

I have only checked one of the affected rows, but that one does not roll a dice. It's anchored to a specific commit on the master branch. Now, I don't think it's realistic to put specific commits there if they change continuously. If no simple/short description can be agreed on, there could be a footnote for each affected row explaining the situation.

[lhmouse]

head doesn't, but HEAD does. In the context of a remote repository, it indicates the default branch, so it is the same as master but more confusing.

HEAD does not mean the default branch, no. HEAD is checkout-dependent. In a given checkout, it can point to the head of the default branch, but that can change without any change to the repository. As usual with Git, it’s not simple, but the best definition I find is “HEAD is you”.

That's why I said 'in the context of a remote repository', which is origin/HEAD in your local repo.

I have only checked one of the affected rows, but that one does not roll a dice. It's anchored to a specific commit on the master branch. Now, I don't think it's realistic to put specific commits there if they change continuously. If no simple/short description can be agreed on, there could be a footnote for each affected row explaining the situation.

It was the case that MSYS2 PKGBUILD files for mingw-w64-{headers,crt,tools,winpthreads}-git (these were old names; -git suffix was removed some time ago) did not specify commits in the URL. This way, whatever someone runs makepkg-mingw, they really build the current HEAD i.e. the master branch.

The current recipes have commit SHA-1 to make the packages reproducible, but essentially they are all rolling and are updated quite frequently.

[Chealer]

head doesn't, but HEAD does. In the context of a remote repository, it indicates the default branch, so it is the same as master but more confusing.

HEAD does not mean the default branch, no. HEAD is checkout-dependent. In a given checkout, it can point to the head of the default branch, but that can change without any change to the repository. As usual with Git, it’s not simple, but the best definition I find is “HEAD is you”.

That's why I said 'in the context of a remote repository', which is origin/HEAD in your local repo.

Even in the context of a remote repository, it does not mean the default branch. It is highly unusual, but a remote HEAD can directly point to a commit. In other words, a remote HEAD can also be detached.

Anyway, "head" is not only an unclear term, but in Git context, it would also be very confusing.