Re: Rebasing stgit stacks

From: Yann Dirson <ydirson@altern.org>
Date: Jan 22, 2007, 19:47 UTC
Message-ID: <20070122194756.GA4083@nan92-1-81-57-214-146.fbx.proxad.net>
In-Reply-To: <tnxirezueui.fsf@arm.com>

On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 05:54:29PM +0000, Catalin Marinas wrote:

Show 23 quoted lines

> Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yann Dirson wrote:
> >> On Thu, Jan 18, 2007 at 09:05:47AM +0000, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> >
> >>> As Jakub said, I would also call this command 'rebase' instead of
> >>> 'pull --to', even if we duplicate a bit of code.
> >>> It would make the implementation even simpler
> >> 
> >> A new command is fine with me, it's just that I feel "rebase <target>"
> >> may be confusing to beginners.  I'd rather say "rebase [<stack>] --to
> >> <target>", but it's just that I don't see the case for specifying a
> >> different stack than the current one.
> >
> > If you want to move some stack from one branch to other, for example
> > from 'next' or next-based branch to 'origin'/'master' or origin-based
> > branch you could do either:
> >
> >   $ git checkout <newbase>
> >   $ stg rebase <stack>
> 
> Currently, in the StGIT terminology stack and branch are about the
> same. If you want to move to a different stack, just use the "stg
> branch" command.

I think you missed the point. StGIT stacks are usually forked off another branch. As I understand it, Jakub talks about standard rebasing, ie. moving the stack base from its current parent branch to a new one.

> A stack is just a branch with stgit-specific metadata.

I would rather say that an StGIT stacks uses a branch, but the stack is not the branch - eg, unapplied patches do not belong to the branch.

Indeed I was thinking about that today, and thought that maybe it would make sense not to use a head ref (and thus not using a real branch), which would minimize the risk of someone committing by error (and thus minimize the need to use "assimilate"), since porcelainish commit tools would then refuse to commit there.

> What you'd probably want is a way to import patches from a different
> branch/stack onto the newly checked out branch.

Sometimes you just want to throw out an obsolete branch and move your stack to a new baseline. That said, being able to duplicate a stack (and possibly rebasing it afterwards) would be useful as well.

> > Although usually you have separate branch as StGIT stack "base", and
> > you can simply rebase git branch, then do
> >
> >   $ stg rebase

Oh, I think I understand - he probably uses "base" to refer to what I call "parent branch", and not to the refs/bases/<branch> reference...

Best regards,

-- 
yann.