Re: Re: bug deleting "unmerged" branch (2.12.3)

From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
Date: Dec 8, 2017, 20:26 UTC
Message-ID: <582105F8768F4DA6AF4EC82888F0BFBE@PhilipOakley>
In-Reply-To: <5A25705C020000A1000292B0@gwsmtp1.uni-regensburg.de>

From: "Ulrich Windl" <Ulrich.Windl@rz.uni-regensburg.de>

Show 5 quoted lines

> Hi Philip!
>
> I'm unsure what you are asking for...
>
> Ulrich

Hi Ulrich,

I was doing a retrospective follow up (of the second kind [1]).

In your initial email https://public-inbox.org/git/5A1D70FD020000A100029137@gwsmtp1.uni-regensburg.de/ you said

"I wanted to delete the temporary branch (which is of no use now), I got a message that the branch is unmerged. I think if more than one branches are pointing to the same commit, one should be allowed to delete all but the last one without warning."

My retrospectives question was to find what what part of the documentation could be improved to assist fellow coders and Git users in gaining a better understanding here. I think it's an easy mistake [2] to make and that we should try to make the man pages more assistive.

I suspect that the description for the `git branch -d` needs a few more words to clarify the 'merged/unmerged' issue for those who recieve the warning message. Or maybe the git-glossary, etc. I tend to believe that most users will read some of the man pages, and would continue to do so if they are useful.

I'd welcome any feedback or suggestions you could provide. -- Philip

Show 32 quoted lines

> >>> "Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@iee.org> 04.12.17 0.30 Uhr >>>
> From: "Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com>
> > "Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@iee.org> writes:
> >
> >> I think it was that currently you are on M, and neither A nor B are
> >> ancestors (i.e. merged) of M.
> >>
> >> As Junio said:- "branch -d" protects branches that are yet to be
> >> merged to the **current branch**.
> >
> > Actually, I think people loosened this over time and removal of
> > branch X is not rejected even if the range HEAD..X is not empty, as
> > long as X is marked to integrate with/build on something else with
> > branch.X.{remote,merge} and the range X@{upstream}..X is empty.
> >
> > So the stress of "current branch" above you added is a bit of a
> > white lie.
>
> Ah, thanks. [I haven't had chance to check the code]
>
> The man page does say:
> .    -d
> .    Delete a branch. The branch must be fully merged in its upstream
> .    branch, or in HEAD if no upstream was set with --track
> .    or --set-upstream.
>
> It's whether or not Ulrich had joined the two aspects together, and if the
> doc was sufficient to help recognise the 'unmerged' issue. Ulrich?
> --
> Philip
>
>

[1] Retrospective Second Directive, section 3.4.2 of (15th Ed) Agile Processes in software engineering and extreme programming. ISBN 1628251042 (for the perspective of the retrospective..) [2] 'mistake' colloquial part of the error categories of slips lapses and mistakes : Human Error, by Reason (James, prof) ISBN 0521314194 (worthwhile)