[petsc-users] reproducibility

[Lawrence Mitchell]

> On 28 May 2021, at 14:59, Mark Adams <mfadams at lbl.gov> wrote:
> 
> Thanks everyone.
> 
> How would I get a version (a branch say) to be and stay visible?
> 
> I am not seeing any of my versions used for this data but they were all in the repo at one point, in a branch. Does the branch need to be merged with main?
> 
> I am going to rerun all the data anyway, so I now want to understand how to set up a branch to use everywhere and, of course, stay visible (for a few months at least).

If the branch (and commits) are merged then they remain (so you can checkout the commit), even if the branch is subsequently deleted. If the commits live on a branch that is never merged and then you delete the branch, then eventually those commits disappear. I don't know what PETSc's policy on tagging is (Satish?), but you could tag the relevant commit to keep it hanging around.

Lawrence