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Re: [PATCH v4 3/7] revert: add --ff option to allow fast forward when cherry-picking

From
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date
Mar 7, 2010, 09:05 UTC
Message-ID
<7vy6i4zem7.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To
<4B936500.9020005@gnu.org>
Paolo Bonzini <bonzini@gnu.org> writes:
Show 6 quoted lines
> On 03/07/2010 04:55 AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> What was the real motive/use case of "cherry-pick --ff"?
>
> Avoiding pointless separation of histories.  It's true that nowadays
> git-patch-id will make a good job of reconciling them, but they do
> look ugly in gitk.
Sorry, but that is a not-very-useful XY answer.

Why were _you_ using "cherry-pick" on a commit that is an immediate child of the current commit? What were you trying to achieve by blindly using cherry-pick even in such a case?

I am sort-of guessing that "blindly" is coming from a script that doesn't bother to check if the commit you are cherry-picking is a direct child, and I do not think it is such a bad thing to allow scripts to blindly call cherry-pick that way and at the same time avoid making cherry-picked commits that are unnecessary. So in that sense I am not opposed to having an option to allow "--ff".

But if that is the real motivation, then making --ff default is a wrong thing to do, as existing scripts knew and trusted cherry-pick will _not_ fast-forward, and the ones that do want fast-forward have already checked just like "rebase -i" does. Changing the default like Chriscool suggested would not help anybody.

That is what I wanted to find out.
Previous: Paolo BonziniNext: Christian Couder
Message 7 of 12 in “add --ff option to cherry-pick”
  1. 0/7 add --ff option to cherry-pickChristian Couder, Mar 6, 2010
  2. 1/7 parse-options: add parse_options_concat() to concat optionsChristian Couder, Mar 6, 2010
  3. 2/7 builtin/merge: make checkout_fast_forward() non staticChristian Couder, Mar 6, 2010
  4. 3/7 revert: add --ff option to allow fast forward when cherry-pickingChristian Couder, Mar 6, 2010
  5. Junio C HamanoMar 7, 2010
  6. Paolo BonziniMar 7, 2010
  7. Junio C HamanoMar 7, 2010
  8. Christian CouderMar 7, 2010
  9. 4/7 cherry-pick: add tests for new --ff optionChristian Couder, Mar 6, 2010
  10. 5/7 Documentation: describe new cherry-pick --ff optionChristian Couder, Mar 6, 2010
  11. 6/7 cherry-pick: add a no-op --no-ff option to future proof scriptsChristian Couder, Mar 6, 2010
  12. 7/7 rebase -i: use new --ff cherry-pick optionChristian Couder, Mar 6, 2010

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