Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] Teach @{-1} to git merge

From: Nanako Shiraishi <nanako3@lavabit.com>
Date: Feb 15, 2009, 09:24 UTC
Message-ID: <20090215182405.6117@nanako3.lavabit.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vfxigqwsp.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

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

Show 13 quoted lines

> The tip commits come from get_sha1(), so obviously it would "work", but it
> does not show what branch it talks about.  HEAD is shown only when the
> user says HEAD (e.g. "git show-branch master HEAD") so I do not see much
> similarity there.
>
> The advertised new feature is that you can use the @{-1} syntax anywhere
> you would use a branch name and it would work as if you typed the name of
> the branch, so in that sense show-branch that shows @{-1} and does not
> show the name of the branch is a bug.
>
> It is the same thing for "git-merge @{-1}".  Sure, it would record a
> correct tree in the resulting commit, but without the fix it would say
> "Merge branch @{-1}" which is wrong and needs to be fixed.

I am sorry, but I don't understand your logic.

'git-merge' can merge any commit. The argument doesn't have to be a branch name. But it behaves differently when the argument is a branch name. Therefore, @{-1} syntax must behave in the same way as any branch name. I can understand that part.

What I don't understand is your comments about 'git-show-branch'. It also takes any commits, not just branch names, and it's output doesn't seem to treat a branch name any specially from other commits.

I think Johannes'es analogy with HEAD is correct.

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