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

(tylercipriani.com)
577 points Delgan | 1 comments | 22 Jun 25 09:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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oftenwrong ◴[22 Jun 25 14:20 UTC] No.44347165[source]▶
Another little-known feature is 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.

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oftenwrong ◴[22 Jun 25 14:38 UTC] No.44347282[source]▶
One more similar feature from a different system: PostgreSQL COMMENT

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.

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jacques_chester ◴[22 Jun 25 18:50 UTC] No.44349322{3}[source]▶
It's a great feature, but GitHub's parser chokes on it.

Compare:

https://github.com/jchester/spc-kit/blob/eb2de71d815b0057e20...

To:

https://github.com/jchester/spc-kit/blob/main/sql/02-spc-int...

Basically the original rendering makes me look incompetent to a casual skimmer. Plus tools like JetBrains IDEs can suss out what comments belong to what DDL anyway.

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1. da_chicken ◴[22 Jun 25 21:04 UTC] No.44350266{4}[source]▶
"The web interface to the version control system doesn't parse the here-string correctly" isn't really a criticism of the PostgreSQL extension. It's a bug in the syntax highlighting.

The COMMENT feature isn't even a good choice for a VIEW, PROCEDURE, or FUNCTION, each of which already supports comments inline in the object definition on the server. No, the main benefits are adding comments to objects that DON'T retain them, like a TABLE, COLUMN, CONSTRAINT, ROLE, etc.