Re: bad git pull

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Dec 16, 2005, 17:40 UTC
Message-ID: <7v3bktj5ya.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <68948ca0512160739g12a3e25en256bae8c354c3a45@mail.gmail.com>

Don Zickus <dzickus@gmail.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

>> While I am sympathetic, this "Oops, I said pull when I meant
>> fetch" sounds remotely similar to "oops, I said 'rm -r' when I
>> meant to say 'ls -r'".  Is it that the tool is too fragile?
>
> Sorry, wrong choice of words.  Didn't mean to imply anything negative.
> Though, I am still learning the tool and its features, I do appreciate
> your feedback and your last email was correct in understanding the
> mess I created.  I'll go read up on the differences between 'fetch'
> and 'pull'.

I too was a bit too defensive, and I agree the tool is prone to easy errors; the worst part is that there is no "rm -i" equivalent to be extra careful [*1*]. On the other hand, we have "git reset" to recover from, so it is not as bad as a mistake with "rm" ;-).

If for example there were a way to say "this `origin' shortcut is to be pulled into `master' branch and nothing else", we could have caught the "git pull" you had trouble with. There was a discussion on the list in the past to extend remotes/ files to allow such restriction of the patchflow to be expressed, but back then I felt the kind of restriction the proposal could express was too limiting, and the discussion was a bit premature because we did not have recommended patterns yet.

We might want to revive the discussion post 1.0. Taking the example of the topic-branch workflow by Tony, the "patch flow" language needs to be able to express something at least this:

 - topic branches -- branched from 'origin' somewhere in the
   past; commits accumulated but usually nothing is merged
   into them.

 - 'test' -- branched from 'origin' somewhere in the past; used
   solely to merge topic branches into it and no commits are
   made into it directly; branches that are regularly merged
   into it are:

   - topic branches
   - 'origin'
   - 'release'

 - 'release' -- branched from 'origin' somewhere in the
   past; trivial/obviously correct commits are made into it
   directly; proven to be good topic branches are merged into it
   for consumption by others; branches that are regularly merged
   into it are:

   - topic branches
   - 'origin'
   - never 'test'

[Footnote]

*1* IMHO "rm -i" is not that safe, though. If one overuses it, it trains one's fingers to say "y" without much thinking.