From: Marc Branchaud Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:21:44 GMT Subject: Re: Heads up: major rebase -i -p rework coming up Message-ID: <497DE318.2070603@xiplink.com> In-Reply-To: I'm sorry, but I just don't understand the purpose of 'was E' (or whatever syntax) in the merge command. Why is there a need to refer to E at all? The only reason I can think of is to replicate E's commit message. Am I missing something? Come to think of it, what if the user wants to edit a merge commit's message? Should there be an 'editmerge' command? M. Johannes Schindelin wrote: > >> - Why do you need "merge D' was E"? Shouldn't "pick E" be able to >> notice that E is a merge and decompose it into "merge D' was E" >> internally? >> >> This one I am somewhat complaining, unless your answer is "because >> this way the user could drop some parents from the merge in the >> editor". > > Not only that; the user could use this to fix mismerges, i.e. by replacing > a SHA-1 with the SHA-1 (or indeed, a short name, unless it is "was") of > the branch that she _actually_ wanted to merge with. > >> And if your answer is that, then my next question will be "if that is >> the case, can the user be expected to easily find out which commit >> each parent SHA-1 refers to, without having more hint on the 'merge' >> insn line?" > > Nope. > > In most cases, however, that should be plenty enough: > > merge 9383af1' was f39d50a Merge branch 'mh/unify-color' into next > > The user does not have to guess much what 9383af1 might refer to.