Re: pull.rebase config vs. --ff-only on command line

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 16, 2021, 18:00 UTC
Message-ID: <60f1c9378d5a1_3302085c@natae.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <00b50aa6-9b61-9f80-1d8d-2db3ed5e7638@aixigo.com>

Matthias Baumgarten wrote:

Show 30 quoted lines

> On 7/16/21 6:44 PM, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> > Elijah Newren wrote:
> >> On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 7:52 AM Matthias Baumgarten
> >> <matthias.baumgarten@aixigo.com> wrote:
> >>> this is my first time contacting you guys and girls so I hope this mail
> >>> achieves the expected standard. I've discovered the following behaviour
> >>> of git:
> >>>
> >>> If pull.rebase is configured to true and git pull --ff-only is executed
> >>> it seems like the config wins, i.e. issuing "Successfully rebased and
> >>> updated refs/heads/...", which is not what I would expect. I always
> >>> believed that command line options would overwrite configured options.
> >>>
> >>> Is my assumption that command line options always win wrong or is this a
> >>> bug?
> >>
> >> It's a bug.
> > 
> > No it isn't.
> > 
> > Elijah is elevating to fact his opinion of what --ff-only should be
> > changed to.
> > 
> > But it has not been changed. Today --ff-only is meant only for the merge
> > mode of `git pull`, and like other merge-only options (e.g. --ff,
> > --no-ff, and --squash) it's ignored in the rebase mode.
> 
> Shouldn't every explicitly given merge option (like --ff-only) overwrite 
> any configured option that would not even result in a merge, i.e. 
> forcing a merge and thus forcing ff-only?

Perhaps. Other developers have suggested that before.

The problem is that everyone wants to make --ff-only the default, and then we start to get into a tricky situation, because what should these do:

  git -c pull.ff=only pull
  git -c pull.ff=only pull --merge
  git -c pull.ff=only pull --rebase

One of these will always fail, when it shouldn't.

I proposed a solution for that, but is has been ignored.

-- 
Felipe Contreras