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At Refs vs. On Refs

If Tag-Grouping has been properly configured (View|Tag-Grouping) the Navigation graph will display matching refs. The way how these refs will be mapped to the file’s commits can be controlled by View|Show At Refs vs. View|Show On Refs. For simplicitly, let’s assume that the Tag-Grouping has been configured for tags “t…”, which would mean a configuration like refs/tags/t(?<name>.*).

With View|Show At Refs selected, every commit will show up those (ranges of) tags which contain exactly the state of the file represented by this commit. One commit may represent the state of multiple tags and another commit may represent the state of no tag (because for every tag there is a more recent commit for this file). The same tag will show up only once in the graph, either explicitly or as part of a range.

With View|Show On Refs selected, the logic is different: every commit will show up the closest tag in which it is contained. In this way, every commit will get assigned to at most one tag (usually it’s one tag; it would be no tag only if the commit is more recent than any tag). The same tag may show up multiple times for different commits.

Depending on the question you want to answer, one of these options is usually more useful than the other:

Example

Following graph illustrates a simple linear history with release tags starting at t1001:

Show At Refs will give following graph:

This may be useful to answer following questions:

  • Which releases contain the file state change 1? Release t1002 and t1003.
  • Which releases contain the bug exactly as present in state bug 1? Release t1004. Note, that subsequent releases, like t1005 contain a different file state, but the bug is most likely still present.
  • Do we have any release with bug 2? Fortunately not, because t1005 does not yet contain the bug and t1006 already contains the fix fix 2 for this bug.

Show On Refs will give following graph:

This may be useful to answer following questions:

  • What’s the first release for which bug 1 was introduced? Release t1004.
  • And what’s the first release for which this bug was fixed, i.e. we have fix 1? Release t1006.

Example

Following graph illustrates a more elaborate history with a main line (currently t200x) and a concurrent release branch (t100x):

Show At Refs will give following graph:

This may be useful to answer following questions:

  • Do we have releases containing bug 1? Definitely: t1002 in our release branch and up to t2002 in our main branch.
  • Do we have releases containing bug 2? Fortunately, no.

Show On Refs will give following graph:

This may be useful to answer following questions:

  • What are the first releases containing fix 1 for bug 1? Release t1003 in our release branch and t2005 in our main branch.