Re: On-branch topic description support?

From: Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>
Date: Jul 21, 2022, 18:26 UTC
Message-ID: <20220721182645.45xrwf2buohibcaw@meerkat.local>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqy1wmgx8t.fsf@gitster.g>

On Thu, Jul 21, 2022 at 11:02:26AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > But this is worse in that "git rebase" will get rid of it by default.
> 
> FWIW, I think I like this much better than Konstantin's "there is an
> empty commit at the bottom", for exactly the same reason why I like
> the original "empty commit at the tip", i.e. simply because we can
> strip away the "extra" commit that holds the topic description
> without having to change all the "real" commits.

I'm happy to consider alternatives if I can have a reliable way of tracking "the series we're working on starts at this commit". I know that this is antithetical to git's design, but I also can't think of anything else that reliably survives rebases.

> In fact, I thought one of the newer "b4" subcommands that is used to
> accept a patch series with a cover letter creates exactly this sort
> of topology, when told to apply the topic to the tip of the
> integration branch?

Yes, you're thinking "b4 shazam -M", which does a "merge --no-ff" with the cover letter as the template merge commit. I guess it does create this exact structure:

             C---B---A---M
             /          /
        X---Y-----------

I'll play with tip merge commits and see how well my "survives rebases" tests go.

-K