Re: What's cooking in git.git (topics)

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 27, 2007, 17:22 UTC
Message-ID: <7vbq9fd2mp.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0711271109130.27959@racer.site>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

Show 19 quoted lines

> On Tue, 27 Nov 2007, しらいしななこ wrote:
>
>> Quoting Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>:
>> 
>> > "git pull --rebase" already has an implementation. Dscho cooked one up
>> > which I've been using since then. It works nicely.
>> 
>> What is the reason that the option was not added to the official git?  
>> Was it coded poorly, buggy or were there some other issues?
>
> It is very well possible that it was coded poorly ;-)
>
> The main reason, I believe, was that some old-timers who know the 
> implications said that it would encourage a wrong workflow.  One thing 
> that could go possibly wrong, for example, is to rebase commits that you 
> already published.
>
> So AFAICT it was deemed not only giving people rope, but making that rope 
> look like a necklace to them.

Hmph, that is different from how I remember, and the "workflow" argument would not be something I would make if we were having that discussion today.

I think what happened was that we took a misguided detour to make this an option to "git merge" (which was _my_ mistake IIRC, sorry), which did not pan out well (because rebase is not "a different form of merge"). After that for some reason we failed to follow-up on the topic. We could have gone back to the original "a pull is integrating following a fetch, and the integration does not have to be merge" approach to see if it was workable, but we didn't.

If people find it useful, I do not think of a huge reason to object to the inclusion. "Give them rope" is good ;-)