Re: [PATCH 3/4] reset: add option "--merge-dirty" to "git reset"

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 11, 2009, 05:34 UTC
Message-ID: <7vws4611u4.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20090910202333.3722.37592.chriscool@tuxfamily.org>

I have two comments (and I share Linus's puzzlement).

> From: Stephan Beyer <s-beyer@gmx.net>

 - Trying to give credit to Stephan is nice, but comparing this with bits
   from the previous round, I am not sure if you need to keep calling this
   Stephan's code anymore.  Perhaps it would be enough to replace the last
   three lines in your commit log message with "Uses some code from
   Stephan's GSoC work in git://repo.or.cz/git/sbeyer.git repository".

   And I would actually prefer you take the authorship, especially if
   Stephan's series does not add an option to "reset".  Then we know whom
   to forward any bug reports to ;-)

   I did not compare this with the GSoC repository, so maybe this is what
   Stephan did after all, but still I thought it is worth to ask.

> This option is nearly like "--merge" except that it is a little bit
> safer as it seems that it tries to keep changes in the index. On the
> contrary "--merge", only keep changes in the work tree.

Nearly, a little bit, seems and tries?

These words do not build confidence that this new feature is robust and behaves predictably.

Of course, you are not adding a random number generator, but a useful mode with a bit more complex behaviour than "--merge that _always_ discards changes in the index." So as the salesman, you would need to do a bit better job to explain what the new behaviour is, and why it is better to have that new behaviour than the behaviour of --merge, to sell that new feature.