From: Benny Halevy <bhalevy@panasas.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:44:08 GMT
Subject: Re: Are these bugs?
Message-ID: <48B66558.8010607@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vwsi2j5q6.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Aug. 28, 2008, 4:20 +0300, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Stephan Beyer <s-beyer@gmx.net> writes:
> 
>> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>
>>> "Jay Soffian" <jaysoffian@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> I understand why "git reset" failed, but at best the error message is
>>>> confusing to a new user.
>>> This is in "patches welcome" category.
>> <noise>
>> But I still think it's stupid.
>> </noise>
> 
> Yes I think it is stupid.  The dummy commit does not change the fact that
> you need to special case it anyway, and special casing you can do without
> the dummy commit that will contaminate the history.  We already have such
> special case for "log -p" (--root used to be optional).  If rebasing onto
> emptiness is problematic, the command should be taught how.
> 
>> So, for a patch, is it sane to just remove/clear the index
>> if get_sha1("HEAD", sha1) fails?
> 
> As a general idea, yes, but details matter.
> 
> If the user says "git reset [--hard/--soft/--mixed] HEAD" from the command
> line, we should say "You do not even have HEAD commit".  If "git reset"
> deduced (incorrectly) that the user meant HEAD, and only in that case, we
> should clear the index.

I'm really not sure about the details, but providing a way to refer
to the empty state of the tree is needed.  For example, I don't know
how to do an interactive rebase of all commits in my tree, or to rebase
a sub-series starting at "INIT" (or "NIL" or whatever :) onto some
other base (say some remote branch).

Benny

> 
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