Re: Editing the root commit

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 19, 2012, 10:09 UTC
Message-ID: <7vy5nj1uld.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20120619091657.GA28005@arachsys.com>

Chris Webb <chris@arachsys.com> writes:

> The first is whether there's a clever symbolic way to refer to the root of
> the current branch, rather than tailing git log output? gitrevisions(7)
> doesn't obviously suggest one.

There is not, for a few good reasons.

The very first commit is no more special than any other commit in the history. Some projects may start with "the first working version", in which case there may be some value to be able to refer to it, while some other projects may start with "the initial snapshot" whose specialness comes _only_ from it being the first one.

"The first working version" specialness may deserve to be tagged, and in that case you would already have a name to refer to it. If on the other hand the first one isn't even worth to be tagged, it does not deserve to waste a short-hand to refer to it at the machinery level. So there is nothing listed in the gitrevisions(7) for it.

Also there is a more important question: Which root commit? There does not necessarily have to be a single "the root" commit in the history.

>   git checkout --orphan rewritten
>   git rm -rf
>   git rebase --interactive --root --onto rewritten master

The argument to "--onto" must be a commit, but "checkout --orphan" is not a way to create a commit; it is a way to bring you to a state without any commit.

I personally think "git rebase -i --root" should be made to just work without requiring "--onto" and let you "edit" even the first one in the history. It is understandable that nobody bothered, as people are a lot less often rewriting near the very beginning of the history than otherwise.

Even though I wouldn't bother doing this myself, I wouldn't mind reviewing a patch series ;-)