Re: git revert with partial commit.

From: Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 4, 2023, 19:40 UTC
Message-ID: <877curzb9u.fsf@osv.gnss.ru>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq4jpv1pcj.fsf@gitster.g>

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

Show 21 quoted lines

> Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>> This kind of operation produces a new commit, so there's no such
>>> thing as a partial revert or partial cherry-pick, at least in
>>> terms of "things Git can do by itself".  But we, as humans writing
>>> programs, wish to *achieve* such things.
>>
>> So, why Git can't help us achieving it by supporting paths limiting in
>> (all) merge operations? There seems to be no absolute obstacles, just a
>> luck of support.
>
> I think there is no fundamental reason to forbid an optional
> pathspec to "cherry-pick" and "revert", given that a commit that
> results from either "git cherry-pick" or "git revert" is called a
> "cherry-pick" or a "revert" merely by convention and there is no
> tool-level support to treat them any specially at merge or rebase
> time [*1*].  It would make it harder to design tool-level support
> for full cherry-picks or reverts, but that is a problem for future
> generation, not ours ;-)  Allowing pathspec to "merge" and recording
> the result as a merge of two (or more) parents is an absolute no-no
> but that is not what we are discussing.

If I got this right, you believe that "git merge" should never have support for "partial merges", whereas it makes sense for cherry-pick and revert? If so, I disagree. There is no reason for Git to strictly prevent me from using the feature specifically in "git merge" (once it's otherwise implemented), provided I do mean it and didn't do it by mistake.

Please notice that I can do it right now already (and I did a few times), only with a more pain than necessary, and I don't see why this pain is to be preserved (provided we do have the feature implemented in the future). Besides, "git merge" is only a helper, and it'd be an improvement if it'll be capable to help in more cases.

[...]

Show 5 quoted lines

> But I do not think Chris meant to say "you should not expect such a
> feature"; what we heard was a reasonable explanation of how the
> current world works, and I do not see a reason to react strongly to
> such a statement as if you were unreasonably forbidden from doing
> something sensible.

Nice, so I figure I may allow myself to still keep a weak hope for the feature, and thus stop being forbidden, even if not unreasonably, from doing something sensible. ;-)

Thanks, -- Sergey Organov