Re: [PATCH] Documentation/git-rebase.txt: fix -f description to match actual git behavior.

From: Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 18, 2014, 08:53 UTC
Message-ID: <87ha1advqe.fsf@osv.gnss.ru>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqioltza8z.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

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

Show 18 quoted lines

> Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>> A sentence "--force has no effect under --preserve-merges mode" does
>>> not tell the readers very much, either and leaves them wondering if
>>> it means "--preserve-merges mode always rebases every time it is
>>> asked, never noticing 'ah, the history is already in a good shape
>>> and there is no need to do anything further'" or "--preserve-merges
>>> mode ignores --force and refuses to recreate the history if the
>>> history is in the shape the mode deems is already desirable."
>>
>> In fact there is no way to force rebase when --preserve-merges is given.
>> Neither --force nor --no-ff has any effect.
>>
>> Maybe some clarification could be given in --preserve-merges
>> description, provided it's not clear that "has no effect" for --force
>> means that one can't force the rebase in this case.
>
> I am not sure if that is an intended behaviour or simply a bug

I think nobody actually ever needed to make it work, even though fundamentally it could have the same usage as in the case of flattening rebase. Once again, it seems that most uses of rebase handle already flat history and thus are served by vanilla invocation.

> (I rarely use preserve-merges myself, so I offhand do not know for
> certain).

I wonder, don't you yourself use preserve-merges because you don't care and just use the default, or because you actually use vanilla history-flattening feature?

-- 
Sergey.