Re: Could this be done simpler?

From: Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de>
Date: Jun 25, 2009, 16:32 UTC
Message-ID: <4A43A6B3.5020407@gmx.de>
In-Reply-To: <863a9oz8lh.fsf@blue.stonehenge.com>

Randal L. Schwartz schrieb:

Show 20 quoted lines

>>>>>> "Junio" == Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> 
> Junio> (5) Continue pretending to be Linus, complete the octopus.  The key is to
> Junio>     let the "fetch" phase of this to append to the FETCH_HEAD, not
> Junio>     replacing it.
> 
> Junio>     $ git pull --append \
> Junio>       git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/audit-current \
> Junio>       for-linus
> 
> The relatively current doc of "--append" looks like this:
> 
>        -a, --append
>            Append ref names and object names of fetched refs to the existing
>            contents of will be overwritten.
> 
> I read this three times, and still don't know what it means (and it doesn't
> even scan well as English), so I would have never known to use this strategy.
> Can you explain this more in detail, or point at something in the mailing list
> that does?

Greetings,

If I may: So the existing description is incomprehensible. I sort of believed I understood it, but apparently I didn't understand enough of it.

Could we ditch the current git-pull --append description? Can then please somebody rewrite this paragraph? This somebody must have completely understood

(1) what this feature is good for (practically speaking)

(2) how it works (technically speaking, to provide reference information)

That would be much more useful, and the use would last longer :-)

I don't dare ask Junio directly.

However, it appears to me that git-pull already does most of what Linus needs, could take some final cosmetic touch-ups WRT logs. So could somebody please rewrite this?

And if I may be so bold: Please rewrite before somebody starts polishing the bisect facilities WRT octopus merges. These seem unrelated, as in: you don't need to make bisect more convenient to be able to fix the description of git-pull --append...

Thanks for not slashing me to pieces. 8-)

Best regards MA