Re: bug?: ORIG_HEAD incorrect after reset during git-rebase -i

From: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 7, 2023, 17:06 UTC
Message-ID: <1b2b8e98-5506-a1e6-6059-a967757b3bb8@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <81218256-5354-4b0a-6f74-7e9605131968@dunelm.org.uk>

Hi Phillip,

Le 2023-01-06 à 09:29, Phillip Wood a écrit :

Show 22 quoted lines

> Hi Philippe & Erik
> 
> On 05/01/2023 00:11, Philippe Blain wrote:
>> Hi Phillip and Erik,
>>
>> Le 2021-12-16 à 11:44, Erik Cervin Edin a écrit :
>>> Hi Phillip,
>>>
>>> Yes, I know.
>>> It's just that I was under the impression ORIG_HEAD was to be reverted
>>> to .git/rebase-merge/orig-head at the finish of the rebase.
>>> Personally, it's the behavior I would expect.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the tips.
>>
>> I just hit the same bug (I think it qualifies as one). In fact git-rebase(1) explicitely mentions
>> that ORIG_HEAD is set to the branch tip before the rebase starts:
> 
> Strictly speaking that is what we do so we're documentation the
> implemented behavior. What's not clear from the documentation is that
> if the user run 'git reset' while rebasing then ORIG_HEAD will be
> overwritten.

Yes, I agree. I think we could highlight it in the doc.

Show 10 quoted lines

> We could update ORIG_HEAD at the end of the rebase as
> you suggested but I wouldn't be surprised if some else complains that
> ORIG_HEAD no longer points to the commit that the reset while running
> rebase. I also wonder if users would expect 'git rebase --continue'
> to update ORIG_HEAD to point to the pre-rebase HEAD so it is
> consistent each time rebase stops. Basically I think the situation is
> confusing and I don't have a clear idea as to how to make it better.
> If someone submits a patch to try and clean things up I'll happily
> look at it but unless I'm hit by a bright idea as to how to fix it I
> probably wont work on it myself.

Thanks for your thoughts. I think you make good points, it's true that some people might be relying on the current behaviour.

I'll try to send a few updates to the doc to make this hopefully clearer.

Cheers, Philippe.