Re: [PATCH] rebase -i: fixup fixup! fixup!

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 16, 2013, 01:19 UTC
Message-ID: <7vy5aakg1y.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vk3lvlmat.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Andrew Pimlott <andrew@pimlott.net> writes:
>
>> Excerpts from Andrew Pimlott's message of Fri Jun 14 12:31:57 -0700 2013:
>>> It happened to work and I added a test.  But then it occurred to me that
>>> it might have been better to fix commit --fixup/--squash to strip the
>>> fixup! or squash! from the referenced commit in the first place.
>>> Anyhow, below is my patch for --autosquash, but unles someone has an
>>> objection to doing it in commit, I'll work on that.
> ...
> If you strip out the prefix when you make commits, you may lose the
> information if you want to use in order to express these different
> orders.

One design principle I would use as a yardstick is to see any code that deliberately lose information to achieve something as highly suspicious. You can discard extra information when you read and use, if you do not need it, but if you do not record it in the first place, you cannot later enhance the reader to take advantage of it.

In general, whenever you see yourself _discarding_ information to solve an issue, you should carefully ask yourself if that is the right solution.

I wish we can make sure contributors can learn various design principles we have benefited from over the course of this project much better.

But it is a bit difficult to _teach_ others.

Writing them down is difficult, not because the rules are vague, but because they are like air. I am sure regular contributors with good design taste share this sentiment.

You will know a violation of them when you see one, you naturally stick to them yourself without even having to think about them, but enumerating them without seeing concrete issues takes effort.

And this "lets squash multiple --fixup/--squash" happened to realize that "we try not to deliberately lose information" is one of them.

Thanks.