Re: Operations on unborn branch

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 28, 2012, 07:12 UTC
Message-ID: <7vd2yyi4l1.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CANiSa6g2UQyvOWS+nuc6y=wzfFTVJ6G8OK14KOs5DJ3f-n5vOw@mail.gmail.com>

Martin von Zweigbergk <martinvonz@gmail.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:25 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Martin von Zweigbergk <martinvonz@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> simplify a lot of things (maybe I'm biased because of the things I
>>> have happened to work on?)
>>
>> Yes.  Do not waste time on it.
>
> Yes, no way I would waste time on that; I was mostly just curious.

You have to special case the edges whichever way you go. You can always add such a fixed parent commit whenever you create a new root commit, but then the codepath that currently relies on the real root commit not having any parent start needing to notice if the parent is the fixed fake commit and exclude it from thee history. Or you can create a new root commit as parent-less like we currently do, and any history examination do not have to special case "ah, I thought there is a parent commit, but that turns out to be the fake one, so I need to ignore it." Creation of a root commit is a one-time operation in any sane history; if we have to have special cases somewhere anyway, it is better to have them in these one-time operation codepaths.