Re: Pick the right default and stop warn on `git pull`

From: Theodore Y. Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Date: Nov 23, 2020, 20:20 UTC
Message-ID: <20201123202003.GB132317@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <CAMP44s3cKVxKa0gOPfi3XRKbGbV=DweFE5pL0HM+v0kECFyPWA@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 01:40:38PM -0600, Felipe Contreras wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 1:17 PM Theodore Y. Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> > If your repository is effectively a leaf repo, then rebasing may be
> > harmless, although there are still who don't like rebasing because it
> > invalidates your previous testing.  My personal preference is to do a
> > git fetch, followed by a git merge --ff-only, and if that errors out,
> > then I know I need to take a bit more care before deciding what to do
> > next.
> 
> Which is why I suggested to make fast-forward-only the default:
> 
> https://lore.kernel.org/git/1398988808-29678-1-git-send-email-felipe.contreras@gmail.com/
> 
> In what case would that default not be what most people want?

Well, it *was* the default, previously, IIRC. The problem is that for "simple" use cases, using rebases for git-pull is "simpler". Well, it's simpler until it does something super-surprising when the project becomes more complex, but if the goal is to have a more gentle learning curve for newbies, especially for small projects --- which are the vast majority of projectds, on, say github and sourceforge --- the case can be made.

So intead of having a huge discussion which is going to be very hard to come to converge (much like the "main" vs "master" question), requiring people to set their own global default or per-repo default is a pretty good compromise.

						- Ted