Git-hierarchy --- how to use

Documentation on git-hierarchy.

Definitions:

Note: when I say branch, I mean the named head.

A "feature branch", or a segment, is a triple:
1/ branch
2/ start commit reference. (points to a real commit - sha1-hash)
3/ base symbolic reference -- name of branch to re-base it on.

A sum is a branch name and a list of summands -- symbolic references
of branches, which should be (re-)merged to form the "unique commit" of the branch.

Sums are handy for:
- the final release commit
- as the "base" reference for segments.

poset: the partial ordering of (relevant) heads, induced by:
 segment-head > the head referenced by the base symref.
 sum-head > each of the heads referenced by the list of summands.

Operations:

git-segment  list, describe, create segments, split
git-sum    list, describe, create, modify  sums

git-rebase-poset the main tool -- rebase/remerge all the sums & segments.
so that for each segment  start is (again) equal to base, and sum-heads commits are joins of the summands.

git-rename  .. when renaming branches, rename the whole segment/sum, or
               update the other symbolic references to reference the changed  name.

git-delete  .. check if possible to delete the sum/segment, or if anything is
               referencing it -> abort.

Implementation:

start ... could have used tags. not now.
bases ... symbolic references; ex.  ref/base/antiflicker points at "ref: refs/heads/master".

summands ... symbolic refs. ex.  ref/sum/all/1  points at "ref: refs/heads/antiflicker",        ref/sum/all/2 points at "ref: refs/heads/auto-raise ...

Transferring to other repos

For now it's only a tool for individual use. There are some limitations in Git, which I had to work around:

• "git push" resolves symbolic refs before sending them.
• "git fetch" from GitHub does not fetch refs other than tags & branches.

So, if I want to at least transfer the structure, I need to patch git, or use this trick:

I can for example make a tag whose message -- as string -- is a table - dump of the symrefs:
sym-ref-name      ref: .....

git tag "hierarchy-refs" -m "$(git-dump-refs)"
and on fetching:
git cat-file tag hierarchy-refs |tail -n +6 |  git-recover-symbolic-refs