Re: [PATCH RFC] rebase: add --revisions flag

From: Björn Steinbrink <b.steinbrink@gmx.de>
Date: Dec 8, 2009, 16:41 UTC
Message-ID: <20091208164113.GB2005@atjola.homenet>
In-Reply-To: <20091208161142.GA32045@redhat.com>

On 2009.12.08 18:11:44 +0200, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:

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> On Tue, Dec 08, 2009 at 05:08:22PM +0100, Björn Steinbrink wrote:
> > On 2009.12.08 16:47:42 +0200, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > > Add --revisions flag to rebase, so that it can be used
> > > to apply an arbitrary range of commits on top
> > > of a current branch.
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
> > > ---
> > > 
> > > I've been wishing for this functionality for a while now,
> > > so here goes. This isn't yet properly documented and I didn't
> > > write a test, but the patch seems to work fine for me.
> > > Any early flames/feedback?
> > 
> > This pretty much reverses what rebase normally does. Instead of "rebase
> > this onto that" it's "'rebase' that onto this". And instead of updating
> > the branch head that got rebased, the, uhm, "upstream" gets updated.
> > 
> > Also, AFAICT this needs to be called like this:
> > git rebase --revisions foo..bar HEAD
> > 
> > Changing the meaning of the <upstream> argument and relying on the fact
> > that <newbase> defaults to <upstream>. If such a thing gets added, it
> > should rather work like --root, not using <upstream> at all, but --onto
> > <newbase> only. Maybe defaulting to HEAD for <newbase> and making --onto
> > optional, as it's reversed WRT what it does compared to the usual
> > rebase.
> 
> Sorry, I had trouble parsing the above.  Could you suggest e.g. how the
> help line should look?

Current:
git rebase [-i | --interactive] [options] [--onto <newbase>]
	<upstream> [<branch>]
git rebase [-i | --interactive] [options] --onto <newbase>
	--root [<branch>]

Add: git rebase [-i | --interactive] [options] --revisions <range> [<branch>]

(Thinking about it, I guess an explicit --onto makes no sense with the --revisions flag)

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> > But generally, I'd say it would be better to add such a range feature to
> > cherry-pick than abusing rebase for that.
> 
> The reason to use rebase is that I often want to combine
> this with -i flag, editing patches as they are applied.

Hm, well, your patch didn't touch git-rebase--interactive.sh ;-)

Björn