You seem to be under the impression that I'm afraid of short-lived branches for minor work. I'm not sure how you could have gotten that impression unless you didn't actually read the article.
I read the article, I enjoyed it. It reminded me of why I like git so much.
git-diff doesn't require you to do gymnastics to compare files from different branches in the same working directory: "git diff branch1 [branch2] path" where omitting branch2 compares the working path instead of branch2's.
And I think your second problem with git, that big hairy branches should somehow be distinct from small simple branches, is also a non-issue. Especially since you already recognized the solution: let big hairy branches live, and small simple branches die.
Since you can reconstruct deleted branches, I don't see the problem with deleting them. Bugfix branches for specific releases can be created as needed by choosing the release commit in master as the starting point for the branch. If you really want to keep dormant branches around you can rename them to keep them distinct from "working" branches.
git-diff doesn't require you to do gymnastics to compare files from different branches
It requires me to use git-diff. How do I do it without involving the VCS tool? How do I get both files side-by-side in Emacs so I can go through them thoroughly (some of us prefer that to reading diffs, you know)?
Since you can reconstruct deleted branches, I don't see the problem with deleting them.
I want the history of my codebase to be easy to get a feel for; that means major work (e.g., a long-lived branch which made significant changes) should be easily accessible. Telling people to hunt down the right merge commit and work back through its ancestry doesn't do that. Inventing ad-hoc schemes of tags or renamed branches to try to make up for the inability to keep a branch but say you're done with it doesn't do that.
It reminded me of why I like git so much.
Meanwhile, it's (one reason) why I don't like git so much.
Did you miss the part where I said I'd like to not involve the VCS tool? Without using git, how do I see two different branches' versions of files?
So never delete branches. You'll know if they're "done" if they've been merged into your master branch.
But nobody else will. What everybody and their brother has told me to do is delete the branch and invent an ad-hoc naming scheme to tag the merge commits. Which is... um, no, that's not the same as being able to close a branch.
I'm not making that claim, and freely admit that I am utterly ignorant about mercurial. I'm merely demonstrating that, contrary to the author's assertion, it's possible to use git without deleting branches and still have a meaningful way to measure whether a branch is "done", and it's the common-sense measure of "has it merged?"
You can change your mind and turn a 'bookmark' into a 'branch' and back again. you can also fold your branch into another one and pretend it never happened. Or you can pick your branch up and place it somewhere else in the tree, or...
