Re: [PATCH] Documentation: suggest "reset --keep" to undo a commit

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 21, 2011, 19:14 UTC
Message-ID: <20110121191459.GC16325@burratino>
In-Reply-To: <7voc7ap3dp.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> But the user could do the reviewing and thinking with some local changes
> still in the working tree (they are incredients for the fourth commit yet
> to be made) and decide to branch at that point.  The description in <1>
> needs to be updated to hint that there can be uncommitted changes, e.g.
>
> 	You have worked for some time, made a few commits, and may have
> 	uncommitted changes.  After reviewing the current state, you
> 	realized that ...
>
> Using --keep may help the user do so, but only if the local changes do not
> conflict with the changes in the recent commits to be discarded, right?

I think this explanation misses out on something.

I may be abusing git in a certain way, but I find myself in the following situation fairly often:

	... hack hack hack ...
	git add -p;	# hmm, looks like multiple features.
	git stash -k
	... test ...
	git commit;	# commit feature #1
	git stash pop

	git add -p
	git stash -k
	... test ...
	git commit; # commit feature #2
	git stash pop

	# hmm, feature #2 is not suitable for this branch.
	git branch wip/feature-2
	git reset --keep HEAD^;	# <*>
	git add -p
	git stash -k
	... test ...
	git commit; # commit feature #3

On line <*>, I am just not thinking about the uncommitted changes. They may be there or they may not. If they are in the way of what I am trying to do, "git reset --keep" will politely inform me so I can act accordingly (usually stash, commit, or discard them).

> By the way, a more natural way to do this would actually be:
>
>     $ git checkout -b topic/wip
>     $ git branch -f @{-1} HEAD~3

True.  (I think the intended scenario was

	git branch topic/wip; # save the tip for later
	git reset --keep HEAD~3
	# now what was I working on?
	... hack hack hack ...

	# okay, now we have time for that diversion.
	git checkout topic/wip

but it would be nice to contrast it with the one you described.)

Show 7 quoted lines

> or using the stash:
>
>     $ git stash ;# save local changes
>     $ git branch topic/wip ;# and mark the tip before rewinding
>     $ git reset --hard HEAD~3 ;# you could say --keep here too
>     $ git checkout topic/wip ;# and then continue
>     $ git stash pop ;# with the local changes

This approach leaves more files touched and more targets to be rebuilt by "make".

Show 6 quoted lines

> Please tell a story where keep makes more sense than hard by enhancing the
> explanatory text <1> associated with this section.  The current text says
> that the three topmost commit representing what you have recently worked
> so far are all unwanted, strongly hinting that hard is more appropriate
> thing to do than keep, which is not what we want if we are changing the
> example to use keep.

Maybe the best story would be "you have just explored a blind alley and decided the last three commits are not a good idea at all", with reference to a new section explaining that

 * --soft is for when the commit in preparation has the right content
   but should be on top of a different parent (e.g., squashing commits)

 * --keep is for transporting your local changes to a different commit
   (e.g., rewinding a branch or transplanting changes)

 - --merge is a limited and low-level tool for recovering from a
   conflicted merge and most often will take ORIG_HEAD as its argument.

   Maybe in the future merges will save more information so reset --merge
   can error out more often.

 - --hard is for resetting to a known state

 - --mixed is for resetting to a known state but leaving the worktree
   alone

> It would be sufficient to just hint that the uncommitted changes that you
> have in your working tree are unrelated to what these three commits wanted
> to do (e.g. you always keep small changes around, such as debugging
> printf's

That use case is less interesting to me --- it is relatively harmless to clobber such content.