Re: git reset respect remote repo (make git idiot proof)

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 5, 2012, 03:11 UTC
Message-ID: <7vsj9tvci0.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <k4jj5n$72b$1@ger.gmane.org>

Geoffrey De Smet <ge0ffrey.spam@gmail.com> writes:

Show 17 quoted lines

> Op 03-10-12 18:40, Phil Hord schreef:
>> But I feel your pain.  I think the solution lies in relegating 'reset'
>> to the plumbing or the power-user realm of commands since I feel it is
>> quite overloaded and sometimes dangerous.  There was a thread some
>> months back heading in this direction, but I failed to keep it going.
>>
>>      http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/185825
>
> I personally use git reset a lot:
> - Try an experiment
> - Commit a few commits as the experiment progresses
> - figure out that the experiment is a dead end
> - git reset all those _local_ commits
>
> The point is: they are local commits, so no harm done.
> But there's nothing preventing me from resetting pushed commits too,
> which would mean harm.

Even if you reset your local branch beyond the point you pushed out, no harm is caused, as "git push" will catch that mistake, e.g.

	: on 'master' that integrates with 'master' at remote
	$ git reset --hard HEAD~4
        : work work work and commit commit commit
        $ git push origin master
        ... will result in refusal due to non-fast-forward

And then you can recover from it easily; one workflow may go like this:

	: update refs/remotes/origin/master, among other things
	$ git fetch origin
        : recover the "work work ... commit commit" part
        $ git rebase origin/master

Another thing we could think about doing is to warn at the point you reset your head away. The above "reset --hard HEAD~4", before doing what it was told to do, could perform:

	git rev-list HEAD~4..HEAD

(replace "HEAD~4" with whereever you are attempting to go) and see if any of the listed commits is an ancestor of @{upstream} of the current branch. And if that is true, then your updated "reset" can issue a warning, just like "git checkout branchname" to leave the detached HEAD state gives you a friendly warning.