Re: [PATCH] Adding rebase merge strategy

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 2, 2007, 18:40 UTC
Message-ID: <7vr6kdl5rj.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <550f9510710020329m7917dc9m2bb6cfc4055fea84@mail.gmail.com>

"Tom Clarke" <tom@u2i.com> writes:

> So it's perhaps the question is whether rebasing should be treated as
> a kind of merging, or as an alternative to merging when pulling.
> Incidentally, are there any other cases other than pulling where using
> rebase as an alternative merge strategy is useful?

Very well put; I like concise summary of the point in a discussion thread like this.

And the question in your last sentence is not merely incidental, but I think is the most crucial one to decide which way we should proceed.

I do not offhand think of a place other than "git pull" that would make sense to sometimes be able to rebase when you normally use merge, so I am inclined to say it would be easier to teach that "'git pull' is usually a 'git fetch' followed by 'git merge', but in certain workflow it is handier to 'git fetch' and then 'git rebase', and here are the ways to get the rebasing behaviour...".