From: Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:54:13 GMT
Subject: Re: Ability to edit message from git rebase --interactive.
Message-ID: <49C0C4C5.5070802@drmicha.warpmail.net>
In-Reply-To: <fabb9a1e0903172242v6f67aa9er40fe0ae2a2db7bc3@mail.gmail.com>

Sverre Rabbelier venit, vidit, dixit 18.03.2009 06:42:
> Heya,
> 
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 02:06, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
>> I am not quite sure what rephrase is buying us.  Do we also want to
>> introduce retree that allows you to muck with the tree object recorded
>> without giving you a chance to clobber the commit log message?
> 
> Is that a common operation? Rephrase is, at least to me...
> 

Rephrase for sure is common, and for sure can be done currently... It's
only that "commit --amend, save&quit, continue" could be shortened.

OTOH: Most commonly one would want to rephrase a commit message or two
without actually rebasing anything. And the proposed change doesn't help
as much as it could, in two respects:

1) I want to be able to say "rephrase HEAD~2" without having to edit a
rebase action script. (That would be useful for rewriting a single
commit as well, and could be added easily.)

2) Currently, all rebasing operations have trouble with merges. But if
all I want to do is rephrasing a log message then no diff/apply is
necessary, no rewriting of trees, no change in the DAG structure (i.e.
connectivity; sha1s change, of course). So there should be a special
mode for DAG-preserving rewrites, where one can be sure that merges are
fully preserved.

2) seems to be the most important point to make rephrasing safe and
convenient.

Michael