From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:52:14 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Rename ".dotest/" to ".git/rebase" and ".dotest-merge" to "rebase-merge"
Message-ID: <7vd4l9zgmp.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <4882454D.2080500@free.fr>

Olivier Marin <dkr+ml.git@free.fr> writes:

> It tries to apply patches even on a dirty tree which makes difficult
> to automatically do a "git reset --hard" with --skip or --abort and
> forces the user to clean the index by hand if last patch failed with
> unmerged files.
>
> So, do some people still use "git am" with a dirty tree or will a
> patch that make it work like "git rebase" be accepted?

Anything that changes "am" to require a clean working tree will NEVER be
accepted.  I personally rely on the ability for it to run in a dirty tree,
so does Linus.

	Side note.  Anything that changes "merge" to require a clean
	working tree is also unacceptable.  Cf.

	http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/9073/focus=9089

	Linus talks about "patch" in the paragraph second to the last one
	in the message; back then he was talking about "git-applymbox" but
	the same argument there applies to its newer incarnation "git-am".

	Side note #2.  It would have been nice if "rebase" were also
	written in such a way that it can work in a dirty tree as long as
	local changes did not interfere with the operation, but it is a
	lot more involved.

When I looked at the "am --abort" patch briefly, I had an impression (by
reading its test case) that it correctly refrained from doing the
destructive "reset --hard".