Introduce to students a different branch naming convention that is widely recognised in git-aware environments

[krishnakumarg1984]

In issue #3 and issue #5 of the 2024 classwork repository, line item 3 in the current instructions say:

3. Create a new branch named with a combination of your team
   e.g., dpshelio-arcteaching

A more modern/widespread convention is to use the slash notation for branch names, e.g. dpshelio/arc-teaching. . Git-aware environments (like GitHub & other code-hosting orgs, various editors and IDEs) nowadays recognise this convention to neatly group branches by the name before the slash sign (see screenshots below). Furthermore, It could be handy in conjunction with the newly introduced sub-issues feature, one can adopt a convention to organise branches as username/feature/sub_feature and it will neatly show this in their UI.

Example of a git repo with the hyphen convention currently used by the class

Image attributed to source git-naming-conventions-blogpost

Example of a git repo with the proposed slash sign that shows neat grouping

From Atlassian

Image attributed to source git-naming-conventions-blogpost

From VSCode

Image attributed to source git-naming-conventions-blogpost

The support is quite widespread, having been adopted in almost all online and offline git-aware environments and tools.

Rationale and motivation for this proposal

Enables us to teach our students the current trends and conventions in the software engineering field whenever we introduce new concepts (git-branching in this case). This will help to reduce frictions when they transition into their professional careers.

References

• Organizing git branches with naming conventions