Re: git-log --cherry-pick gives different results when using tag or tag^{}

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 15, 2014, 09:49 UTC
Message-ID: <20140115094945.GD14335@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <52CFF27C.1090108@gmail.com>

[+cc Junio, as the bug blames to him]

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 02:15:40PM +0100, Francis Moreau wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> In mykernel repository, I'm having 2 different behaviours with git-log
> but I don't understand why:
> 
> Doing:
> 
>     $ git log --oneline --cherry-pick --left-right v3.4.71-1^{}...next
> 
> and
> 
>     $ git log --oneline --cherry-pick --left-right v3.4.71-1...next
> 
> give something different (where v3.4.71-1 is a tag).
> 
> The command using ^{} looks the one that gives correct result I think.

Yeah, this looks like a bug. Here's a simple reproduction recipe:

  commit() {
    echo content >$1 &&
    git add $1 &&
    git commit -m $1
  }

  git init repo && cd repo &&
  commit one &&
  commit two &&
  sleep 1 &&
  git tag -m foo mytag &&
  git checkout -b side HEAD^ &&
  git cherry-pick mytag &&
  commit three

The sleep seems to be necessary, to give the commit and its cherry-picked version different commit times (presumably because it impacts the order in which we visit them during the traversal).

Running:

  git log --oneline --decorate --cherry-pick --left-right mytag^{}...HEAD

produces the expected:

  > e36cc32 (HEAD, side) three

but running it with the tag, as:

  git log --oneline --decorate --cherry-pick --left-right mytag...HEAD

yields:

  > e36cc32 (HEAD, side) three
  > 5e96f7d two
  > db92fca (tag: mytag, master) two

Not only do we get the cherry-pick wrong (we should omit both "twos"), but we seem to erroneously count the tagged "two" as being on the right-hand side, which it clearly is not (and which is probably why we don't find the match via --cherry-pick).

This worked in v1.8.4, but is broken in v1.8.5. It bisects to Junio's 895c5ba (revision: do not peel tags used in range notation, 2013-09-19), which sounds promising.

I think what is happening is that we used to apply the SYMMETRIC_LEFT flag directly to the commit. Now we apply it to the tag, and it does not seem to get propagated. The patch below fixes it for me, but I have no idea if we actually need to be setting the other flags, or just SYMMETRIC_LEFT. I also wonder if the non-symmetric two-dot case needs to access any pointed-to commit and propagate flags in a similar way.

diff --git a/revision.c b/revision.c
index 7010aff..1d99bfc 100644
--- a/revision.c
+++ b/revision.c
@@ -1197,6 +1197,8 @@ int handle_revision_arg(const char *arg_, struct rev_info *revs, int flags, unsi
 				free_commit_list(exclude);
 
 				a_flags = flags | SYMMETRIC_LEFT;
+				a->object.flags |= a_flags;
+				b->object.flags |= flags;
 			}
 
 			a_obj->flags |= a_flags;

-Peff