Re: Heads up: major rebase -i -p rework coming up

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 24, 2009, 20:37 UTC
Message-ID: <7vpricmoda.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0901242056070.14855@racer>

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

Show 12 quoted lines

> 	pick A
> 	pick C
> 	pick D
> 	goto A'
> 	pick B
> 	merge D' was E
>
> This should lead to a much more intuitive user experience.
>
> I am very sorry if somebody actually scripted rebase -i -p (by setting 
> GIT_EDITOR with a script), but I am very certain that this cleanup is 
> absolutely necessary to make rebase -i -p useful.

Three questions.

- An obvious one first.  How does this relate to the sequencer project (that
  seems to have gone somewhat dark?)

- What's with the apostrophe?  I seem to remember that you argued it would
  be enough to make "A" stand for the original when it is used for the
  first time and the second and later use can stand for the result of the
  last use (e.g. the "goto A'" above can be simply spelled as "goto A"),
  when I suggested to use "mark" in a way similar to how fast-import
  language uses it during the sequencer discussion?

  I am not complaining; I am just being curious why the sudden change of
  heart.

- Why do you need "merge D' was E"?  Shouldn't "pick E" be able to notice
  that E is a merge and decompose it into "merge D' was E" internally?

  This one I am somewhat complaining, unless your answer is "because this
  way the user could drop some parents from the merge in the editor".

  And if your answer is that, then my next question will be "if that is
  the case, can the user be expected to easily find out which commit each
  parent SHA-1 refers to, without having more hint on the 'merge' insn
  line?"