From: Junio C Hamano Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:59:00 GMT Subject: Re: [RFC] origin link for cherry-pick and revert Message-ID: <7vej3s223f.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <20080910001316.GF7459@cuci.nl> "Stephen R. van den Berg" writes: > Junio C Hamano wrote: >>As for "by the way ... was used to make this commit": this is git. So how >>you arrived at the tree state you record in a commit *does not matter*. > > The typical use case for the origin links is in a project with several > long-lived branches which use cherry-picks to backport amongst them. > There is no real other way to solve this case, except for some rather > kludgy stuff in the free-form commit message which doesn't mesh well > with rebase/filter-branch/stgit etc. > > As to "does not matter": then why does git store parent links? The parent links describe *where* you came from, not *how*. And if you think the difference is just "semantics", then you haven't grokked the first lesson I gave in this thread. "parents" record the reference points against which you make "this resulting commit suits the purpose of my branch better than any histories leading to these commits".