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Git Notes: Git's coolest, most unloved feature (2022)

579 points by Delgan 1y ago

rpicard 1y ago
This would be a cool place for LLMs to store a summary of the prompts used to generate the code in order to make it easier for other LLMs and humans to pick up where they left off.
- fudged71 1y ago
  I've been thinking about this exact same problem. It would be great to store a log of how much time/tokens were spent reasoning, what was the reasoning path, why were certain decisions made, etc. I don't know if rationale is something better suited for the git commit log, or tagged by code function to an external "rationale" system of record.
akoboldfrying 1y ago
I've been using git for probably 10 years and I didn't know git notes existed. Cool! > Here is a plea for all forges: make code review metadata available offline, inside git. I think this will fall on deaf ears as far as commercial forges like GitHub go, since as you yourself observe: > But much of the value of git repos ends up locked into forges, like GitHub. For-profit enterprises are not generally excited about commoditising their own value-add. This is not a jab at GitHub -- I think GitHub do everything right (offer a great service, a very generous free tier, and make it possible to extract all your data via API if you want to shift providers). It's just the nature of any commercial operation.
- esafak 1y ago
  You have to start a new service that offers that feature as one of its differentiators, then the competitors might add it (back) to catch up.
  - xeonmc 1y ago
    any reason why Forgejo/Codeberg couldn't/wouldn't adopt this?
    - bicolao 1y ago
      The only git-notes related issue I found is https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues/6385 https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues/6385. So, probably because nobody has raised it.
      - saghm 1y ago
        Seems like a chicken-and-egg problem. Not enough people know about them because they aren't supported by most providers, and because people don't know about them, there's no pressure for providers to add support for them.
marcodiego 1y ago
I bet it already exists, but what about an issue tracker in plain text maintained by git itself?
- shawnz 1y ago
  See this recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43971620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43971620 And less recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20318947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20318947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13732598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13732598
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > I bet it already exists, but what about an issue tracker in plain text maintained by git itself? I have an issue tracker file that can be added to a project. While it's technically plain text, the interface for the file ensures that a format is used, and the format ensures that changes reflect only a single ticket. Just as long as no one edits the file using a different program, it will work just fine. Don't think anyone uses it, though. https://github.com/lelanthran/rotsit https://github.com/lelanthran/rotsit
- righthand 1y ago
  Also checkout fossil-scm.org
  - natebc 1y ago
    Yeah, I was going to say, if you think this is cool wait till you get a look at fossil! It's even got chat! https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/chat.md https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/chat.md
kccqzy 1y ago
Git notes are only cool if you frequently add text to a commit after the commit has happened and visible to others. The Acked-By and mailing list discussion link examples don't seem to be good examples. Both of these are likely already known when the commit is made. And git commit message basically can have an unlimited length, so you could very well copy all the discussions about the commit that happened on a forge into the commit message itself. One use case I think might be a better example is to add a git note to a commit that has later been reverted.
- 0x696C6961 1y ago
  Discussion can keep happening after the commit is created.
- Zambyte 1y ago
  > The Acked-By and mailing list discussion link examples don't seem to be good examples. Both of these are likely already known when the commit is made. Discussion regarding a commit (is: review) and acknowledgment of a commit cannot happen before the commit has been made. > One use case I think might be a better example is to add a git note to a commit that has later been reverted. Commit messages are better for this use case. When you got blame a file, it shows the latest changes for that file. If a commit reverts changes from another commit, the newer commit that reverts the older commit will show up in the blame.
  - saghm 1y ago
    > Discussion regarding a commit (is: review) and acknowledgment of a commit cannot happen before the commit has been made. It can't happen before the commit on a feature branch, but it can happen before merging the commit back to the main development branch. Given that a rebase or merge commit is already frequently necessary to integrate changes from a feature branch after review is finished, I don't see why this type of info couldn't be added (or even required to exist) before merging.
    - Pxtl 1y ago
      The history-destroying problems of rebasing are a rant on their own.
olejorgenb 1y ago
What happens of you rebase a branch containing commits with notes attached?
- jwilk 1y ago
  Notes are copied to from the original to the rewritten commit by default. See https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes#Documentation/git-notes.txt-notesrewritecommand https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes#Documentation/git-notes.t... for details. But I have this in my IRC logs: < _jwilk> TIL git-notes rewriting doesn't work properly when doing amend within rebase. :/
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    Yeah I think that's a pretty big issue. Not going to be fun using git notes for code review if they get lost every time you squash or recreate commits. One thing that would be really useful though - if you could somehow use git notes to tell Git not to download some blobs by default that would be great. It would solve the "someone added 100 MB of binary files to this project 5 years ago and then deleted them" problem. That would be too useful though so I wont hold by breath.
- paffdragon 1y ago
  Check the notes.rewrite config options in https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes#Documentation/git-notes.txt-notesrewritecommand https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes#Documentation/git-notes.t... Also notes.rewriteRef. You can use these to configure git to carry your notes across amend/rebase.
b0a04gl 1y ago
i use git notes pretty heavily in my current role. started as an experiment to keep track of internal code reviews without flooding the commit message or making PRs for everything. i tag every commit with context what tickets it maps to, infra constraints, links to incident threads if it's a fix. all lives in the repo. this avoids the need to grep slack or jira just to know why a line changed. nce you start using it at scale, you realise how little you need the platform UI at all. we keep talking about reproducibility in builds, but never in intent. maybe this is where that starts
- smallpipe 1y ago
  Shouldn’t that be the commit message ? Or is the goal to also link forward in time, such as “we realised this commit introduced bug #123” ?
  - b0a04gl 1y ago
    haha wait do you actually read long commit messages( more than a line) all the way through? like line-by-line, imo commit msg = tweet, git note = blog post.
    - smallpipe 1y ago
      In my line of work a bug could cost multiple millions. I do read them. I write long ones. I would love if my colleagues started writing longer ones too.
      - Ayesh 1y ago
        Me too. Most of the times, the commit message is 10+ lines while the change itself is -1/+1. We use GitHub for repo hosting and a separate issue tracker to coordinate changes. It bothers me a lot that GitHub UI doesn't render markdown for commit messages. We all write really detailed and nicely formatted commit messages, and had to work out a commit message sync so the issue tracker can display related commit messages in full Markdown glory.
    - 1y ago
noelwelsh 1y ago
This is a UI problem, not a lack-of-knowledge problem. If Github's UI surfaced notes they would instantly get much more usage.
- stephenlf 1y ago
  Yeah I wish GitHub supported these
  - wiktor-k 1y ago
    As described in the post they did in the past: https://github.blog/news-insights/git-notes-display/ https://github.blog/news-insights/git-notes-display/
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      It does not say why they got rid of it.
oftenwrong 1y ago
Another little-known feature is git trailers: https://alchemists.io/articles/git_trailers https://alchemists.io/articles/git_trailers These are key-value structures data that can be included on a commit when it is created. These are used by some systems for attaching metadata. For example, Gerrit uses this for attaching its Change-Id.
- oftenwrong 1y ago
  One more similar feature from a different system: PostgreSQL COMMENT https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/sql-comment.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/sql-comment.html This allows you to attach text to various database objects in PostgreSQL. I wish PostgreSQL had a feature that was more like structured key-value database object metadata that could be edited.
  - stephenlf 1y ago
    I love PostgreSQL COMMENT. I built a prototype app for a buddy with Supabase and added a COMMENT to every table.
    - codesnik 1y ago
      with supabase it is almost essential. But adding comments with migrations is somewhat tedious, unless you're writing actual sql. Like, you know, with supabase.
    - jaakl 1y ago
      I hate it. I used it to have carefully curated metadata (sources etc) to my collection of tens of tables, and someone else took backup/restore of the database and all this was lost.
  - Pxtl 1y ago
    MS SQL has a similar feature called Extended Properties but the API is quite tedious.
  - jacques_chester 1y ago
homebrewer 1y ago
Also supported by Forgejo since version 10 (released in January of this year): https://forgejo.org/2025-01-release-v10-0/#new-features https://forgejo.org/2025-01-release-v10-0/#new-features https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls/4753 https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls/4753
- Tmpod 1y ago
  That's neat, ty for sharing!
Shank 1y ago
Why did GitHub remove support for them, and how do we get this decision reversed?
- fmbb 1y ago
  I think the answer is in the link. Making git notes more usable would make it easier to migrate from GitHub. It would make you less locked in.
remram 1y ago
In practice I get a lot of value out of referencing commit hashes. If I fix a problem I introduced in a previous commit (for example, commit bumped version, and I forgot to bump it somewhere), my fix will say "amends ab12cd34". That way when I need to cherry-pick that commit, or do something similar (bump again), I can search for the hash of the commit I'm looking at to find what might be missing. UI is worse than git-notes but no need for additional setup to sync them.
- codesnik 1y ago
  you kinda doing by hand what git commit --fixup could do for you, and what git rebase -i could pick up automatically.
  - remram 1y ago
    Rebasing doesn't work in collaborative situations. And if not rebasing, since --fixup does not include the hash only the commit message, it's bad for this.
legends2k 1y ago
I discovered notes from the man pages around 2020 but didn't use them as it was primarily a local repo feature. By default they don't get pushed or fetched. If course, one can configure it such that it's pushed and fetched, but that's a team decision and mine didn't vote for it.
- WorldMaker 1y ago
  I feel like notes needs a more similar default to tags' updated defaults today: fetched/pulled by default but not pushed by default. It is useful to keep personal tags and personal notes and some people have workflows involving those, but once tags/notes are in the upstream repository, it should maybe be assumed that everyone should know about them.
827a 1y ago
Why would I choose to stash information like this in the git notes, versus just appending it to the commit message itself?
- zygentoma 1y ago
  Because you would not want to write the whole git history starting from the commit you want to stash this info one everytime you want to stash additional info … Appending information to the commit itself creates a new commit and all the commits that are based on the commit will also have to change consequently.
  - 827a 1y ago
    Ah; so notes don't impact the commit hash? That is a solid reason.
    - cesarb 1y ago
      Yeah, git notes are AFAIK stashed into their own hidden branch, referencing the original commit by its hash. That is, the git note points to the commit, not the opposite.
      - Izkata 1y ago
        Kind of. The structure is the same and you can check it out if you want, but it's actually a 3rd directory under "refs" - the other two being "heads" (branches) and "tags". That avoids special-casing with trying to hide branches or conflicting with a branch name a user might make.
pseudoshikhar 1y ago
[dead]
hungryhobbit 1y ago
Coolest? It's just extra comments...
paffdragon 1y ago
I wrote a little tool for versioning based on conventional commits that uses git note for a version override. In case you want to force a specific version instead of the one autodetected, you can add a git note with the version you want. This was useful when migrating a piece of functionality into its own repo and you want to preserve history. Adding these forced version tags into commits would be quite messy in the new repo where you switch to a new versioning scheme.
pettereriksson 1y ago
I think it would be interesting to add the prompt (or a summary of the prompt) as a note for each commit. This would allow the LLM to later reason about each line of code by going back and checking the notes to mine for requirements, and take those into account when changing the code again.
- lozenge 1y ago
  Or just put it in the commit message, after all, it is the human's description of what the commit is supposed to do
lucasoshiro 1y ago
There are many "Git's coolest, most unloved feature", e.g.: bisect, pickaxe, reflog, range-diff, archive, annotated tags, etc. Sadly they are often forgotten as many people thing of Git only as a glorified Google Drive...
- knallfrosch 1y ago
  Git notes is redundant since you need a higher-level project management tool to track features anyway. Roadmaps, feature hierarchy and non-technical details. Think of any big tracker or Jira. I think that's fine. Unix philosophy is to focus on one thing and do that well.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    A project management tool that uses Notes would make IDE integration easier though. I vaguely recall dismissing Notes as a solution to my problems. I may be recollecting some of this wrong, but IIRC the problem with Notes is that they aren’t batteries included. It’s easier to cajole devs into using new tools if the setup is simple and it doesn’t complicate their workflow. Notes fails this litmus test. Set it on by default and make it come down with pull and up with push instead of a separate activity.
  - chrishill89 1y ago
    There are many uses for Git notes even though you might use a project management tool. Particularly all those things which are relevant for developers only, or that the developers can use as the data source for "higher-level" goals.
- pydry 1y ago
  In many cases this is because those features arent actually that useful and they are frivolities surrounding a workhorse.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    I use a lot of features of my tools only when the shit hits the fan. People appreciate me doing it quickly. What they don’t appreciate is when I get mad at them for polluting those tools during their normal activities. Like destroying git history by renaming files incorrectly. It’s hard to explain to them that things like “mis en place” aren’t OCD but table stakes for sophisticated activities.
nop17 1y ago
If note just for the last commit, would it easier just amend the last commit message to include any note? Don't need remember another command option.
cesarb 1y ago
Git notes were used at the LibreOffice project to track, for each commit to the Apache OpenOffice repository (which they mirrored as a branch on LibreOffice's git repository), whether that commit was not relevant (for instance, changes to the build system which LibreOffice had long replaced with a better one), duplicated an already existing change on LibreOffice (often from many years earlier), or, the least common case, that it was accepted into LibreOffice (and which commit did the cherry-pick). You can still see it for itself at https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=aoo/trunk https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=aoo/tru... (that git front-end still displays notes). (They stopped tracking these changes a few years ago, probably because the pace of changes to Apache OpenOffice slowed down to a trickle, and there's no longer much to be gained by cherry-picking these few changes.)
lars512 1y ago
I had a good use case at Our World In Data for the public data pipeline, where one repo had the pipeline and one git-lfs repo had the build output of the pipeline. A git note added to a commit to the code pipeline recorded the hash identifying the built data. Overall it felt elegant, and needed no maintenance after setting it up, but honestly it was never used. I think the need to look back in time was rarer than expected, and git notes being hidden by default didn’t help for awareness.
mtillman 1y ago
OP suggested that they are unused because of the awkward interface but I find that if you were taking notes in text about a release, you can easily pipe those notes to Git Notes on commit. This seems easy to me. Am I missing something?
r-bryan 1y ago
Methinks Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment finds some empirical support here.
grahar64 1y ago
I tried using git notes for distributed secure reviews but hit some road block with merges. It is a good idea that has limitations that limit its adoption
- remram 1y ago
  What are the limitations?
stuartd 1y ago
The post links to a GitHub page, which contains this: > I just blogged about the new git-notes functionality over at the [Pro Git blog](dead link) The link is archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20100828155504/http://progit.org/2010/08/25/notes.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100828155504/http://progit.org...
zackmorris 1y ago
This is great! And how did I not know about this? My favorite days are when I learn something new. Even better are when I learn that I was wrong and change my mind to improve my thinking. So meta! Git notes would be ideal for annotating commits that contain commit hashes used as breadcrumbs to inform the developer (usually me months later) about context around previous work. These hashes might have changed due to a rebase or from using disk space optimization tools that rewrite history like these: https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/ https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/ https://github.com/rtyley/bfg-repo-cleaner https://github.com/rtyley/bfg-repo-cleaner https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo https://github.com/tiavision/GitRewrite https://github.com/tiavision/GitRewrite See also: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5613345/how-to-shrink-the-git-folder https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5613345/how-to-shrink-th... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1398919/make-git-consume-less-disk-space https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1398919/make-git-consume... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2116778/reduce-git-repository-size https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2116778/reduce-git-repos... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3119850/is-there-a-way-to-reduce-the-size-of-the-git-folder https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3119850/is-there-a-way-t... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38789265/git-delete-some-history-commits-to-reduce-git-folder-size-how https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38789265/git-delete-some... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16057391/git-free-disk-space-by-clearing-repository-history https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16057391/git-free-disk-s... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31423525/how-to-reduce-disk-space-usage-in-a-large-repository https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31423525/how-to-reduce-d... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16854425/compact-repository-by-removing-old-commits https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16854425/compact-reposit... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13999191/trimming-huge-git-repository-size https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13999191/trimming-huge-g... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4515580/how-do-i-remove-the-old-history-from-a-git-repository https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4515580/how-do-i-remove-... These methods are all uniquely terrible in various ways. Most likely user error on my part. I need this technique: 1. Choose a range of commit hashes (or hashes before a commit) and remove them. This can be useful when splitting repos, for example on projects that started as backend+frontend where the frontend is being forked off in a new repo and the older backend portion needs to be removed from it for security/privacy. 2. Rebase all branches (including those that crossed the deleted portion) to preserve their structure but start/end as recently as possible. Optionally discard branches that were created and merged entirely within the deleted ported, unless they're the trunk of other branches that merge after the deleted portion. 3. Search for old commit hashes in commit messages and update them to the new hashes while rebasing. 4. Bonus points for updating stashes (or other git features) having any commit hashes in their names. Also for importing/exporting a list of important commit hashes for use in project management, such as updating hashes in comments on kanban boards like Jira. 5. More bonus points for searching for large files (such as app.js or other build artifacts) so that they can be stripped from commits in branches, preferably not on a main trunk like master. If you followed this far, I could also use a technique that rebases merged branches so that they form a series of D shapes instead of overlapping B shapes (this is useful during git bisect). Ideally this would happen automatically or be enforced via rules on sites like GitHub and GitLab. I always rebase my branches before merging, but others can't be bothered. https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/merging-vs-rebasing https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/merging-vs-rebasing Where I'm going with this: I git reset and git cherry-pick constantly in my own branches before merging, so that each branch has a clean work history like the trunk. I think of this as quantum committing, because I keep exploring the problem space until I find a solution that collapses (merges) into the history. The problem is that git GUIs are inadequate for this work. I need to be able to cut/copy/paste commits, drag and drop them for reordering, etc. It should also derive the commit diff needed to make a commit match a branch (or folder) rather than throwing a conflict in my face, so that it operates more like Apple's Time Machine. If I had this app, I could simply select all commits that I wanted to delete, it would ask me "this rewrites history, are you sure?", and then delete them and do the right thing for affected branches. It would also have infinite undo powered by git reflog. The idea being that commit hashes should not take priority - it's all about the information. We should never be trapped by the state of the repo, because that creates anxiety. So we're missing a tool to orchestrate git the way that Kubernetes orchestrates Docker.
EricRiese 1y ago
A 9 year old feature request for notes support in GitLab was closed recently https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/15029 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/15029 You have to log in to read it unfortunately, but any gitlab.com account should work.
- jinnko 1y ago
  There's another issue with a more complete proposal https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/216351 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/216351
- opello 1y ago
  To save people from wondering, it was closed for abandonment and not completion: > This feature request is being closed as our current focus isn't in this area.
johnisgood 1y ago
Is there a list of not-really-known features of git (such as git notes, git trailers, etc.)? I have been using git for decades but I have not yet came across of these two.
xg15 1y ago
Sounds really cool, but how do notes play together with the "history rewriting" features (amend, rebase, etc) where you effectively replace a commit with a modified copy? It sounds as if the notes are attached to a specific commit (or tree or blob) ID. Are git rebase etc smart enough to also copy over the notes to the new commit, or will they just vanish? What happens on interactive rebases, e.g. if I squash multiple commits into a single one? I see the same problem with attaching notes to blobs and trees: It's not doing what you might think it does: It feels like it would attach metadata to a file or directory in the repo, but it really attaches the metadata to some specific content: E.g. if you have a blob that encodes the string "Hello world!" and attach the note to it, would git associate that note with all files that have that content? Also, if you change one file to "Hello, world!", would it lose the notes?
- rlpb 1y ago
  > Are git rebase etc smart enough to also copy over the notes to the new commit... This is configurable. By default, amend and rebase operations will copy them forward. See git-config(1) under `notes.rewrite`.
  - xg15 1y ago
    Ah, ok. That sounds better. Thanks for the info!
  - chrishill89 1y ago
    By default no copying will be done. While `notes.rewrite.amend` and `notes.rewrite.rebase` are true you also need `notes.rewriteRef` which tells it what notes refs should be rewritten. And it has no value by default. (you can set it to a glob copy over all notes refs)
    - fnl 1y ago
      Thanks for the warning! From the git docs: > Set it to refs/notes/commits to enable rewriting for the default commit notes. Why wouldn’t that at least be the default? Why is rewriting off by default in the first place?
ozim 1y ago
It is not coolest most unloved feature. It is a gimmick feature that could have been cool in some really specific cases like team of only developers running the whole company. Whatever is needed goes into commit message and referencing tickets in separate system is a feature not a bug - because JIRA or any other system is used to communicate with non developers. Like business analysts don't get access to code or repositories at all for example or support people don't get access to the repositories and code. Yeah I can see how one could write front end to get the notes visible/editable by non developers but it still does not make any sense because BA/Support others don't care about specific commits and a single feature might fit into a commit but most likely does not. Even more fun is when you have multi repo and your feature touches couple services then git notes are quite useless because then you really need reference to outside system.
- stopthe 1y ago
  > business analysts don't get access to code or repositories at all for example or support people don't get access to the repositories and code. Yes, but isn't it insane? What is the benefit from treating your own product as a black box? Yet that's mainstream. Sometimes I have the analyst (not on my team, but from a team we share a monorepo with) asking me questions that can be answered literally with a line of code. And she's a technical kind, knows SQL and such. And we write very idiomatic, high level code. But still, culture cannot change itself until it dies due to inherent inefficiency.
  - ozim 1y ago
    I think you underestimate inefficiency of requiring all business analysts and employees to learn GIT. If not all employees than more employees. I can pick put up job ad for BA saying knows JIRA and I have dozens of applicants. We had a technical guy once where I worked that wanted to force sales guys to use LaTex to write documentation and requirements in and store it in GIT. I feel bad for the guy as he was laughed out by sales guys and he did not understood why because those are such a great tools…
    - stopthe 1y ago
minikomi 1y ago
This seems an interesting thing to explore for adding extra context to coding agents.
lrvick 1y ago
A few years ago I wrote a simple git "extension" that allows you to attach signatures to existing git commits, and allow for verification that a minimum number of signatures from relevant teams exist. This is possible because Git Notes allow you to attach and distribute arbitrary metadata with any commit ref. https://git.distrust.co/public/git-sig https://git.distrust.co/public/git-sig
chrishill89 1y ago
I use Git Notes all the time. It doesn’t look like the article mentions that you can attach the notes to emails you send out with git-format-patch(1) and git-send-email(1). I use them for emails to attach comments on patches that shouldn’t go into the commit message: I did <insert research notes> and found no other places in the code base where this needs to be fixed. And as the cover letter for a single patch (if needed/not cowered by the commit message). And also like a commit message on the iterations on the patches. So for a patch series that go over three versions the note may say what updates where done in versions 2 and 3. And other than that I use notes for: - Private notes on how I’ve manually tested the commit - Link to CI - A localized changelog for customers (who are not technical)

579 points by Delgan 1y ago

This would be a cool place for LLMs to store a summary of the prompts used to generate the code in order to make it easier for other LLMs and humans to pick up where they left off.

fudged71 1y ago
I've been thinking about this exact same problem. It would be great to store a log of how much time/tokens were spent reasoning, what was the reasoning path, why were certain decisions made, etc. I don't know if rationale is something better suited for the git commit log, or tagged by code function to an external "rationale" system of record.

akoboldfrying 1y ago

I've been using git for probably 10 years and I didn't know git notes existed. Cool! > Here is a plea for all forges: make code review metadata available offline, inside git. I think this will fall on deaf ears as far as commercial forges like GitHub go, since as you yourself observe: > But much of the value of git repos ends up locked into forges, like GitHub. For-profit enterprises are not generally excited about commoditising their own value-add. This is not a jab at GitHub -- I think GitHub do everything right (offer a great service, a very generous free tier, and make it possible to extract all your data via API if you want to shift providers). It's just the nature of any commercial operation.

esafak 1y ago
You have to start a new service that offers that feature as one of its differentiators, then the competitors might add it (back) to catch up.
- xeonmc 1y ago
  any reason why Forgejo/Codeberg couldn't/wouldn't adopt this?
  - bicolao 1y ago
    The only git-notes related issue I found is https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues/6385 https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues/6385. So, probably because nobody has raised it.
    - saghm 1y ago
      Seems like a chicken-and-egg problem. Not enough people know about them because they aren't supported by most providers, and because people don't know about them, there's no pressure for providers to add support for them.

marcodiego 1y ago

I bet it already exists, but what about an issue tracker in plain text maintained by git itself?

shawnz 1y ago
See this recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43971620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43971620 And less recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20318947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20318947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13732598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13732598
lelanthran 1y ago
> I bet it already exists, but what about an issue tracker in plain text maintained by git itself? I have an issue tracker file that can be added to a project. While it's technically plain text, the interface for the file ensures that a format is used, and the format ensures that changes reflect only a single ticket. Just as long as no one edits the file using a different program, it will work just fine. Don't think anyone uses it, though. https://github.com/lelanthran/rotsit https://github.com/lelanthran/rotsit
righthand 1y ago
Also checkout fossil-scm.org
- natebc 1y ago
  Yeah, I was going to say, if you think this is cool wait till you get a look at fossil! It's even got chat! https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/chat.md https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/chat.md

kccqzy 1y ago

Git notes are only cool if you frequently add text to a commit after the commit has happened and visible to others. The Acked-By and mailing list discussion link examples don't seem to be good examples. Both of these are likely already known when the commit is made. And git commit message basically can have an unlimited length, so you could very well copy all the discussions about the commit that happened on a forge into the commit message itself. One use case I think might be a better example is to add a git note to a commit that has later been reverted.

0x696C6961 1y ago
Discussion can keep happening after the commit is created.
Zambyte 1y ago
> The Acked-By and mailing list discussion link examples don't seem to be good examples. Both of these are likely already known when the commit is made. Discussion regarding a commit (is: review) and acknowledgment of a commit cannot happen before the commit has been made. > One use case I think might be a better example is to add a git note to a commit that has later been reverted. Commit messages are better for this use case. When you got blame a file, it shows the latest changes for that file. If a commit reverts changes from another commit, the newer commit that reverts the older commit will show up in the blame.
- saghm 1y ago
  > Discussion regarding a commit (is: review) and acknowledgment of a commit cannot happen before the commit has been made. It can't happen before the commit on a feature branch, but it can happen before merging the commit back to the main development branch. Given that a rebase or merge commit is already frequently necessary to integrate changes from a feature branch after review is finished, I don't see why this type of info couldn't be added (or even required to exist) before merging.
  - Pxtl 1y ago
    The history-destroying problems of rebasing are a rant on their own.

olejorgenb 1y ago

What happens of you rebase a branch containing commits with notes attached?

jwilk 1y ago
Notes are copied to from the original to the rewritten commit by default. See https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes#Documentation/git-notes.txt-notesrewritecommand https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes#Documentation/git-notes.t... for details. But I have this in my IRC logs: < _jwilk> TIL git-notes rewriting doesn't work properly when doing amend within rebase. :/
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Yeah I think that's a pretty big issue. Not going to be fun using git notes for code review if they get lost every time you squash or recreate commits. One thing that would be really useful though - if you could somehow use git notes to tell Git not to download some blobs by default that would be great. It would solve the "someone added 100 MB of binary files to this project 5 years ago and then deleted them" problem. That would be too useful though so I wont hold by breath.
paffdragon 1y ago
Check the notes.rewrite config options in https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes#Documentation/git-notes.txt-notesrewritecommand https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes#Documentation/git-notes.t... Also notes.rewriteRef. You can use these to configure git to carry your notes across amend/rebase.

b0a04gl 1y ago

i use git notes pretty heavily in my current role. started as an experiment to keep track of internal code reviews without flooding the commit message or making PRs for everything. i tag every commit with context what tickets it maps to, infra constraints, links to incident threads if it's a fix. all lives in the repo. this avoids the need to grep slack or jira just to know why a line changed. nce you start using it at scale, you realise how little you need the platform UI at all. we keep talking about reproducibility in builds, but never in intent. maybe this is where that starts

smallpipe 1y ago
Shouldn’t that be the commit message ? Or is the goal to also link forward in time, such as “we realised this commit introduced bug #123” ?
- b0a04gl 1y ago
  haha wait do you actually read long commit messages( more than a line) all the way through? like line-by-line, imo commit msg = tweet, git note = blog post.
  - smallpipe 1y ago
    In my line of work a bug could cost multiple millions. I do read them. I write long ones. I would love if my colleagues started writing longer ones too.
    - Ayesh 1y ago
      Me too. Most of the times, the commit message is 10+ lines while the change itself is -1/+1. We use GitHub for repo hosting and a separate issue tracker to coordinate changes. It bothers me a lot that GitHub UI doesn't render markdown for commit messages. We all write really detailed and nicely formatted commit messages, and had to work out a commit message sync so the issue tracker can display related commit messages in full Markdown glory.
  - 1y ago

noelwelsh 1y ago

This is a UI problem, not a lack-of-knowledge problem. If Github's UI surfaced notes they would instantly get much more usage.

stephenlf 1y ago
Yeah I wish GitHub supported these
- wiktor-k 1y ago
  As described in the post they did in the past: https://github.blog/news-insights/git-notes-display/ https://github.blog/news-insights/git-notes-display/
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    It does not say why they got rid of it.

oftenwrong 1y ago

Another little-known feature is git trailers: https://alchemists.io/articles/git_trailers https://alchemists.io/articles/git_trailers These are key-value structures data that can be included on a commit when it is created. These are used by some systems for attaching metadata. For example, Gerrit uses this for attaching its Change-Id.

oftenwrong 1y ago
One more similar feature from a different system: PostgreSQL COMMENT https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/sql-comment.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/sql-comment.html This allows you to attach text to various database objects in PostgreSQL. I wish PostgreSQL had a feature that was more like structured key-value database object metadata that could be edited.
- stephenlf 1y ago
  I love PostgreSQL COMMENT. I built a prototype app for a buddy with Supabase and added a COMMENT to every table.
  - codesnik 1y ago
    with supabase it is almost essential. But adding comments with migrations is somewhat tedious, unless you're writing actual sql. Like, you know, with supabase.
  - jaakl 1y ago
    I hate it. I used it to have carefully curated metadata (sources etc) to my collection of tens of tables, and someone else took backup/restore of the database and all this was lost.
- Pxtl 1y ago
  MS SQL has a similar feature called Extended Properties but the API is quite tedious.
- jacques_chester 1y ago

homebrewer 1y ago

Also supported by Forgejo since version 10 (released in January of this year): https://forgejo.org/2025-01-release-v10-0/#new-features https://forgejo.org/2025-01-release-v10-0/#new-features https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls/4753 https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls/4753

Tmpod 1y ago
That's neat, ty for sharing!

Shank 1y ago

Why did GitHub remove support for them, and how do we get this decision reversed?

fmbb 1y ago
I think the answer is in the link. Making git notes more usable would make it easier to migrate from GitHub. It would make you less locked in.

remram 1y ago

In practice I get a lot of value out of referencing commit hashes. If I fix a problem I introduced in a previous commit (for example, commit bumped version, and I forgot to bump it somewhere), my fix will say "amends ab12cd34". That way when I need to cherry-pick that commit, or do something similar (bump again), I can search for the hash of the commit I'm looking at to find what might be missing. UI is worse than git-notes but no need for additional setup to sync them.

codesnik 1y ago
you kinda doing by hand what git commit --fixup could do for you, and what git rebase -i could pick up automatically.
- remram 1y ago
  Rebasing doesn't work in collaborative situations. And if not rebasing, since --fixup does not include the hash only the commit message, it's bad for this.

legends2k 1y ago

I discovered notes from the man pages around 2020 but didn't use them as it was primarily a local repo feature. By default they don't get pushed or fetched. If course, one can configure it such that it's pushed and fetched, but that's a team decision and mine didn't vote for it.

WorldMaker 1y ago
I feel like notes needs a more similar default to tags' updated defaults today: fetched/pulled by default but not pushed by default. It is useful to keep personal tags and personal notes and some people have workflows involving those, but once tags/notes are in the upstream repository, it should maybe be assumed that everyone should know about them.

827a 1y ago

Why would I choose to stash information like this in the git notes, versus just appending it to the commit message itself?

zygentoma 1y ago
Because you would not want to write the whole git history starting from the commit you want to stash this info one everytime you want to stash additional info … Appending information to the commit itself creates a new commit and all the commits that are based on the commit will also have to change consequently.
- 827a 1y ago
  Ah; so notes don't impact the commit hash? That is a solid reason.
  - cesarb 1y ago
    Yeah, git notes are AFAIK stashed into their own hidden branch, referencing the original commit by its hash. That is, the git note points to the commit, not the opposite.
    - Izkata 1y ago
      Kind of. The structure is the same and you can check it out if you want, but it's actually a 3rd directory under "refs" - the other two being "heads" (branches) and "tags". That avoids special-casing with trying to hide branches or conflicting with a branch name a user might make.

pseudoshikhar 1y ago

[dead]

hungryhobbit 1y ago

Coolest? It's just extra comments...

paffdragon 1y ago

I wrote a little tool for versioning based on conventional commits that uses git note for a version override. In case you want to force a specific version instead of the one autodetected, you can add a git note with the version you want. This was useful when migrating a piece of functionality into its own repo and you want to preserve history. Adding these forced version tags into commits would be quite messy in the new repo where you switch to a new versioning scheme.

pettereriksson 1y ago

I think it would be interesting to add the prompt (or a summary of the prompt) as a note for each commit. This would allow the LLM to later reason about each line of code by going back and checking the notes to mine for requirements, and take those into account when changing the code again.

lozenge 1y ago
Or just put it in the commit message, after all, it is the human's description of what the commit is supposed to do

lucasoshiro 1y ago

There are many "Git's coolest, most unloved feature", e.g.: bisect, pickaxe, reflog, range-diff, archive, annotated tags, etc. Sadly they are often forgotten as many people thing of Git only as a glorified Google Drive...

knallfrosch 1y ago
Git notes is redundant since you need a higher-level project management tool to track features anyway. Roadmaps, feature hierarchy and non-technical details. Think of any big tracker or Jira. I think that's fine. Unix philosophy is to focus on one thing and do that well.
- hinkley 1y ago
  A project management tool that uses Notes would make IDE integration easier though. I vaguely recall dismissing Notes as a solution to my problems. I may be recollecting some of this wrong, but IIRC the problem with Notes is that they aren’t batteries included. It’s easier to cajole devs into using new tools if the setup is simple and it doesn’t complicate their workflow. Notes fails this litmus test. Set it on by default and make it come down with pull and up with push instead of a separate activity.
- chrishill89 1y ago
  There are many uses for Git notes even though you might use a project management tool. Particularly all those things which are relevant for developers only, or that the developers can use as the data source for "higher-level" goals.
pydry 1y ago
In many cases this is because those features arent actually that useful and they are frivolities surrounding a workhorse.
- hinkley 1y ago
  I use a lot of features of my tools only when the shit hits the fan. People appreciate me doing it quickly. What they don’t appreciate is when I get mad at them for polluting those tools during their normal activities. Like destroying git history by renaming files incorrectly. It’s hard to explain to them that things like “mis en place” aren’t OCD but table stakes for sophisticated activities.

nop17 1y ago

If note just for the last commit, would it easier just amend the last commit message to include any note? Don't need remember another command option.

cesarb 1y ago

Git notes were used at the LibreOffice project to track, for each commit to the Apache OpenOffice repository (which they mirrored as a branch on LibreOffice's git repository), whether that commit was not relevant (for instance, changes to the build system which LibreOffice had long replaced with a better one), duplicated an already existing change on LibreOffice (often from many years earlier), or, the least common case, that it was accepted into LibreOffice (and which commit did the cherry-pick). You can still see it for itself at https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=aoo/trunk https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=aoo/tru... (that git front-end still displays notes). (They stopped tracking these changes a few years ago, probably because the pace of changes to Apache OpenOffice slowed down to a trickle, and there's no longer much to be gained by cherry-picking these few changes.)

lars512 1y ago

I had a good use case at Our World In Data for the public data pipeline, where one repo had the pipeline and one git-lfs repo had the build output of the pipeline. A git note added to a commit to the code pipeline recorded the hash identifying the built data. Overall it felt elegant, and needed no maintenance after setting it up, but honestly it was never used. I think the need to look back in time was rarer than expected, and git notes being hidden by default didn’t help for awareness.

mtillman 1y ago

OP suggested that they are unused because of the awkward interface but I find that if you were taking notes in text about a release, you can easily pipe those notes to Git Notes on commit. This seems easy to me. Am I missing something?

r-bryan 1y ago

Methinks Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment finds some empirical support here.

grahar64 1y ago

I tried using git notes for distributed secure reviews but hit some road block with merges. It is a good idea that has limitations that limit its adoption

remram 1y ago
What are the limitations?

stuartd 1y ago

The post links to a GitHub page, which contains this: > I just blogged about the new git-notes functionality over at the [Pro Git blog](dead link) The link is archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20100828155504/http://progit.org/2010/08/25/notes.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100828155504/http://progit.org...

zackmorris 1y ago

This is great! And how did I not know about this? My favorite days are when I learn something new. Even better are when I learn that I was wrong and change my mind to improve my thinking. So meta! Git notes would be ideal for annotating commits that contain commit hashes used as breadcrumbs to inform the developer (usually me months later) about context around previous work. These hashes might have changed due to a rebase or from using disk space optimization tools that rewrite history like these: https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/ https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/ https://github.com/rtyley/bfg-repo-cleaner https://github.com/rtyley/bfg-repo-cleaner https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo https://github.com/tiavision/GitRewrite https://github.com/tiavision/GitRewrite See also: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5613345/how-to-shrink-the-git-folder https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5613345/how-to-shrink-th... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1398919/make-git-consume-less-disk-space https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1398919/make-git-consume... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2116778/reduce-git-repository-size https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2116778/reduce-git-repos... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3119850/is-there-a-way-to-reduce-the-size-of-the-git-folder https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3119850/is-there-a-way-t... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38789265/git-delete-some-history-commits-to-reduce-git-folder-size-how https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38789265/git-delete-some... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16057391/git-free-disk-space-by-clearing-repository-history https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16057391/git-free-disk-s... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31423525/how-to-reduce-disk-space-usage-in-a-large-repository https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31423525/how-to-reduce-d... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16854425/compact-repository-by-removing-old-commits https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16854425/compact-reposit... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13999191/trimming-huge-git-repository-size https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13999191/trimming-huge-g... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4515580/how-do-i-remove-the-old-history-from-a-git-repository https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4515580/how-do-i-remove-... These methods are all uniquely terrible in various ways. Most likely user error on my part. I need this technique: 1. Choose a range of commit hashes (or hashes before a commit) and remove them. This can be useful when splitting repos, for example on projects that started as backend+frontend where the frontend is being forked off in a new repo and the older backend portion needs to be removed from it for security/privacy. 2. Rebase all branches (including those that crossed the deleted portion) to preserve their structure but start/end as recently as possible. Optionally discard branches that were created and merged entirely within the deleted ported, unless they're the trunk of other branches that merge after the deleted portion. 3. Search for old commit hashes in commit messages and update them to the new hashes while rebasing. 4. Bonus points for updating stashes (or other git features) having any commit hashes in their names. Also for importing/exporting a list of important commit hashes for use in project management, such as updating hashes in comments on kanban boards like Jira. 5. More bonus points for searching for large files (such as app.js or other build artifacts) so that they can be stripped from commits in branches, preferably not on a main trunk like master. If you followed this far, I could also use a technique that rebases merged branches so that they form a series of D shapes instead of overlapping B shapes (this is useful during git bisect). Ideally this would happen automatically or be enforced via rules on sites like GitHub and GitLab. I always rebase my branches before merging, but others can't be bothered. https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/merging-vs-rebasing https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/merging-vs-rebasing Where I'm going with this: I git reset and git cherry-pick constantly in my own branches before merging, so that each branch has a clean work history like the trunk. I think of this as quantum committing, because I keep exploring the problem space until I find a solution that collapses (merges) into the history. The problem is that git GUIs are inadequate for this work. I need to be able to cut/copy/paste commits, drag and drop them for reordering, etc. It should also derive the commit diff needed to make a commit match a branch (or folder) rather than throwing a conflict in my face, so that it operates more like Apple's Time Machine. If I had this app, I could simply select all commits that I wanted to delete, it would ask me "this rewrites history, are you sure?", and then delete them and do the right thing for affected branches. It would also have infinite undo powered by git reflog. The idea being that commit hashes should not take priority - it's all about the information. We should never be trapped by the state of the repo, because that creates anxiety. So we're missing a tool to orchestrate git the way that Kubernetes orchestrates Docker.

EricRiese 1y ago

A 9 year old feature request for notes support in GitLab was closed recently https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/15029 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/15029 You have to log in to read it unfortunately, but any gitlab.com account should work.

jinnko 1y ago
There's another issue with a more complete proposal https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/216351 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/216351
opello 1y ago
To save people from wondering, it was closed for abandonment and not completion: > This feature request is being closed as our current focus isn't in this area.

johnisgood 1y ago

Is there a list of not-really-known features of git (such as git notes, git trailers, etc.)? I have been using git for decades but I have not yet came across of these two.

xg15 1y ago

Sounds really cool, but how do notes play together with the "history rewriting" features (amend, rebase, etc) where you effectively replace a commit with a modified copy? It sounds as if the notes are attached to a specific commit (or tree or blob) ID. Are git rebase etc smart enough to also copy over the notes to the new commit, or will they just vanish? What happens on interactive rebases, e.g. if I squash multiple commits into a single one? I see the same problem with attaching notes to blobs and trees: It's not doing what you might think it does: It feels like it would attach metadata to a file or directory in the repo, but it really attaches the metadata to some specific content: E.g. if you have a blob that encodes the string "Hello world!" and attach the note to it, would git associate that note with all files that have that content? Also, if you change one file to "Hello, world!", would it lose the notes?

rlpb 1y ago
> Are git rebase etc smart enough to also copy over the notes to the new commit... This is configurable. By default, amend and rebase operations will copy them forward. See git-config(1) under `notes.rewrite`.
- xg15 1y ago
  Ah, ok. That sounds better. Thanks for the info!
- chrishill89 1y ago
  By default no copying will be done. While `notes.rewrite.amend` and `notes.rewrite.rebase` are true you also need `notes.rewriteRef` which tells it what notes refs should be rewritten. And it has no value by default. (you can set it to a glob copy over all notes refs)
  - fnl 1y ago
    Thanks for the warning! From the git docs: > Set it to refs/notes/commits to enable rewriting for the default commit notes. Why wouldn’t that at least be the default? Why is rewriting off by default in the first place?

ozim 1y ago

It is not coolest most unloved feature. It is a gimmick feature that could have been cool in some really specific cases like team of only developers running the whole company. Whatever is needed goes into commit message and referencing tickets in separate system is a feature not a bug - because JIRA or any other system is used to communicate with non developers. Like business analysts don't get access to code or repositories at all for example or support people don't get access to the repositories and code. Yeah I can see how one could write front end to get the notes visible/editable by non developers but it still does not make any sense because BA/Support others don't care about specific commits and a single feature might fit into a commit but most likely does not. Even more fun is when you have multi repo and your feature touches couple services then git notes are quite useless because then you really need reference to outside system.

stopthe 1y ago
> business analysts don't get access to code or repositories at all for example or support people don't get access to the repositories and code. Yes, but isn't it insane? What is the benefit from treating your own product as a black box? Yet that's mainstream. Sometimes I have the analyst (not on my team, but from a team we share a monorepo with) asking me questions that can be answered literally with a line of code. And she's a technical kind, knows SQL and such. And we write very idiomatic, high level code. But still, culture cannot change itself until it dies due to inherent inefficiency.
- ozim 1y ago
  I think you underestimate inefficiency of requiring all business analysts and employees to learn GIT. If not all employees than more employees. I can pick put up job ad for BA saying knows JIRA and I have dozens of applicants. We had a technical guy once where I worked that wanted to force sales guys to use LaTex to write documentation and requirements in and store it in GIT. I feel bad for the guy as he was laughed out by sales guys and he did not understood why because those are such a great tools…
  - stopthe 1y ago

minikomi 1y ago

This seems an interesting thing to explore for adding extra context to coding agents.

lrvick 1y ago

A few years ago I wrote a simple git "extension" that allows you to attach signatures to existing git commits, and allow for verification that a minimum number of signatures from relevant teams exist. This is possible because Git Notes allow you to attach and distribute arbitrary metadata with any commit ref. https://git.distrust.co/public/git-sig https://git.distrust.co/public/git-sig

chrishill89 1y ago

I use Git Notes all the time. It doesn’t look like the article mentions that you can attach the notes to emails you send out with git-format-patch(1) and git-send-email(1). I use them for emails to attach comments on patches that shouldn’t go into the commit message: I did <insert research notes> and found no other places in the code base where this needs to be fixed. And as the cover letter for a single patch (if needed/not cowered by the commit message). And also like a commit message on the iterations on the patches. So for a patch series that go over three versions the note may say what updates where done in versions 2 and 3. And other than that I use notes for: - Private notes on how I’ve manually tested the commit - Link to CI - A localized changelog for customers (who are not technical)

Git Notes: Git's coolest, most unloved­ feature (2022)

Git Notes: Git's coolest, most unloved­ feature (2022)

Git Notes: Git's coolest, most unloved feature (2022)

Git Notes: Git's coolest, most unloved feature (2022)