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Re: RFC: grafts generalised

From
Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz>
Date
Jul 3, 2008, 00:21 UTC
Message-ID
<20080703002117.GH12567@machine.or.cz>
In-Reply-To
<20080702173203.GA16235@cuci.nl>
On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 07:32:03PM +0200, Stephen R. van den Berg wrote:
> Also, the graft mechanism specifically is intended as a temporary
> solution until one uses filter-branch to "finalise" the result into a
> proper repository which becomes cloneable.

Grafts are _much_ older than filter-branch and I'm not sure where did you get this idea; do we claim that in any documentation?

Show 8 quoted lines
> >The fact that git-filter-branch (and earlier cg-admin-rewrite-hist)
> >respects grafts, and rewrites history so that grafts are no-op and are
> >not needed further is a bit of side-effect.
> 
> I beg to differ.  It's not a side effect, it's the proper way to get
> rid of the grafts file.  Grafts are temporary and ugly.  In proper
> repositories they are a sign of transition to a proper state.
> The proper state is attained by using git filter-branch.

There's nothing ugly or necessarily temporary about grafts. One example of completely valid usage is adding previous history of a project to it later.

First, you don't need to carry around all the archived baggage you are probably rarely going to access anyway if you don't need to; changing a VCS is ideal cutoff point.

Second, you don't need to worry about doing perfect conversion at the moment of the switch.

Third, even if you think you have done it perfectly, it will turn out later that something is wrong anyway.

Fourth, it may not be actually _clear_ what the canonical history should be. Consider linux-kernel, you can graft the BitKeeper history (or one of possible candidates for the ideal conversion, though one is AFAIK clearly favoured), or you could also graft commit-per-tarball history even from the times before BitKeeper; you certainly don't want either in the current main history DAG.

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
The last good thing written in C++ was the Pachelbel Canon. -- J. Olson
Previous: Stephen R. van den BergNext: Stephen R. van den Berg
Message 16 of 36 in “RFC: grafts generalised”
  1. Stephen R. van den BergJul 2, 2008
  2. Jakub NarebskiJul 2, 2008
  3. Michael J GruberJul 2, 2008
  4. Stephen R. van den BergJul 2, 2008
  5. Mike HommeyJul 2, 2008
  6. Michael J GruberJul 2, 2008
  7. Stephen R. van den BergJul 2, 2008
  8. Stephan BeyerJul 2, 2008
  9. Stephan BeyerJul 2, 2008
  10. Dmitry PotapovJul 2, 2008
  11. Stephan BeyerJul 2, 2008
  12. Stephen R. van den BergJul 3, 2008
  13. Andreas EricssonJul 7, 2008
  14. Stephen R. van den BergJul 7, 2008
  15. Stephen R. van den BergJul 2, 2008
  16. Petr BaudisJul 3, 2008
  17. Stephen R. van den BergJul 3, 2008
  18. Jakub NarebskiJul 4, 2008
  19. Dmitry PotapovJul 2, 2008
  20. Dmitry PotapovJul 2, 2008
  21. Stephen R. van den BergJul 2, 2008
  22. Dmitry PotapovJul 2, 2008
  23. Dmitry PotapovJul 2, 2008
  24. Stephen R. van den BergJul 2, 2008
  25. Avery PennarunJul 2, 2008
  26. Junio C HamanoJul 2, 2008
  27. Junio C HamanoJul 2, 2008
  28. Junio C HamanoJul 3, 2008
  29. Johannes SixtJul 3, 2008
  30. Stephen R. van den BergJul 3, 2008
  31. Johannes SixtJul 3, 2008
  32. Stephen R. van den BergJul 3, 2008
  33. Stephen R. van den BergJul 2, 2008
  34. Petr BaudisJul 3, 2008
  35. Petr BaudisJul 3, 2008
  36. Junio C HamanoJul 3, 2008

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