From: Nanako Shiraishi <nanako3@lavabit.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 05:13:29 GMT
Subject: Re: What's cooking in git.git (topics)
Message-ID: <20080719141329.6117@nanako3.lavabit.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vtzen7bul.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

Quoting Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>:

> I tried not to sound too negative when describing -Xours and -Xtheirs
> there, but actually I think "-s theirs" is even worse.  It is how you
> would discard what you did (perhaps because the other side has much better
> solution than your hack), but that can be much more easily and cleanly
> done with:
>
> 	$ git reset --hard origin
>
> Some poeple might say "But with 'merge -s theirs', I can keep what I did,
> too".  That reset is simply discarding what I did.
>
> That logic also is flawed.  You can instead:
>
> 	$ git branch i-was-stupid
>       $ git reset --hard origin
>
> if you really want to keep record of your failure.
>
> One big problem "-s theirs" has, compared to the above "reset to origin,
> discarding or setting aside the failed history" is that your 'master'
> history that your further development is based on will keep your failed
> crap in it forever if you did "-s theirs".  Hopefully you will become a
> better programmer over time, and you may eventually have something worth
> sharing with the world near the tip of your master branch.  When that
> happens, however, you _cannot_ offer your master branch to be pulled by
> the upstream, as the wider world will not be interested in your earlier
> mistakes at all.

Thanks for sharing your insight.  Perhaps the above can become a separate pargraph to explains why there is no "theirs" merge strategy somewhere in the manual?

-- 
Nanako Shiraishi
http://ivory.ap.teacup.com/nanako3/