Re: [RFC] Applying a graft to a tree and "rippling" the changes through

From: Yann Dirson <ydirson@altern.org>
Date: Nov 19, 2005, 17:09 UTC
Message-ID: <20051119170929.GF3393@nowhere.earth>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0511191612350.4895@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>

Hi,

On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 04:27:12PM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> On Sat, 19 Nov 2005, Yann Dirson wrote:
> > - 1st level describes states that existed
> > - 2nd level describes events that occured, causing the state to change
> > - 3rd level describes the succession of events
> 
> But using git's approach you have these levels. Only that you do not 
> strictly record them as such:
> 
> 	- 1st level is trees, agreed.
> 
> 	- 2nd level is inside the commits, i.e. if you look at the tree(s)
> 	  of the parent commit(s), you can extract that tree->tree change.
> 
> 	- 3rd level is not just the succession of events: commit->commit
> 	  is much stronger.

I think we do agree on this too - it's just the usual problem with written discussions.

> By the last, I mean that in the commit, by referencing the parent(s) 
> (which itself references its parent(s)) you have the whole history. And by 
> validating the commit object by its SHA1, you have the history immutable, 
> too.

Right. But the 2nd and 3rd levels are not currently distinct in git. See below.

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> Now, the original purpose of this thread was to discuss a way to un-graft 
> some commit objects, i.e. to re-record a history which was not recorded as 
> such.
> 
> This may be nice for completeness purposes, but it contradicts the main 
> idea behind git: You want to be certain about things. By signing off on 
> some commit (together with the meta information about its parent(s) and 
> the tree), you state that you actually placed your work on *that* 
> particular history. And if you based your work on a commit I have, I can 
> be certain that we agree.

My proposal only introduces an additional level. You will still be able to sign history lines, and they will still be immutable.

This proposal is only meant to add some flexibility. With the current model, if I take Linus' 2.6 tree, I only have the 2.6 history back to 2.6.12rc2. I would first like to note that any signed commit in this tree can assert nothing prior to that version: we are only able to check part of the history.

Now let's suppose that I am interested in adding some prior history, say 2.6.11->2.6.12rc2. I can add the tree and commit objects for that range, and I now want to graft to current tree. That is, I will add a new history line, which will have to duplicate all subsequent commits from the current tree. That includes for example duplicating comments, whereas in my model they would belong to the level below, and would not need duplicating: the new history line will just reference the lower-level commits, which do contain comment/date/author information. The history-level objects will probably just need to contain the following information:

- commit to describe
- previous history
- history commiter, which may be distinct from the commiter of the
  change
- date of the record of the history object, which will be distinct
  from the commit date, except usually for the history line on which
  the change author works

We can then note that:

- to provide the same level of information with current objects, the
commits on the new history line would have to also point to their
counterpart in the original history line, adding information that
belongs to the 4th level (how our view of history evolves with time)

- the number of history objects could be made much less than the
number of commits, by using a single one to describe the full path
between two branchpoints of that history line:

parent: xxxxxx parent: yyyyyy commit: zzzzzz commit: aaaaaa commit: bbbbbb committer: ... date: ...

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> The proposed rewriting of the history is very lax about that:
> 
> Say, you introduce a history line, where you start with -- say -- some 
> obsolete proprietary code from some telephone company, and then change -- 
> say, by a primitive algorithm -- the code to match git-0.99.8, all the 
> time committing with some random commit message.
> 
> Then you make a graft which says git-0.99.8 was derived from that history 
> , too. Now, you ungraft the tree. It looks like other developers and I 
> signed off on working on a "derivative" of some obscure, copyrighted code.

No, the grafted commits should not be accessible from a previously-signed history line. The operation you describe will produce a different history line, and I can already do the same with git now :)

Best regards,

-- 
Yann Dirson    <ydirson@altern.org> |
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