From: Joel Mahoney <joelmahoney@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:02:45 GMT
Subject: Re: fatal: bad revision 'HEAD'
Message-ID: <89456E84-1A85-4D0C-9643-C191EE877E61@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20090813043855.GA21158@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Hello,

I'm not sure I completely understand where you guys are at with this  
thread : - ) but I thought I would mention that the question arose  
from my inability to install a plugin into a Ruby on Rails project  
based on my having (unknowingly) set branch.master.rebase = true.

I bring this up because a lot of people are getting their first  
exposure to git through Rails/github, and installing plugins in Rails  
is (I think) a good example of brining an existing history (the  
plugin) into a separate repository (your project).  and because this  
maneuver is built into the "./script/plugin install" action, it is not  
something that cannot be easily customized.

again, I may be a little off track here, but I thought I would remind  
you of the original context for what that is worth : - )

thanks again for your help!

Joel


On Aug 12, 2009, at 10:38 PM, Jeff King wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 09:36:04PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> I honestly do not know of a sane reason (other than "because I can")
>> anybody would want to _start_ a new root in a repository with an  
>> existing
>> history.  And doing a "pull" with or without --rebase immediately  
>> after
>> starting a new root is doubly insane, as you say.
>
> IIRC, the reason I did it was to throw away history, starting a new  
> root
> at the current state. Which is at least a little bit sane, though I
> think I might just do it with a graft and filter-branch these days.
>
>> But that is the kind of "ending up to have" I am talking about; it  
>> is not
>> something you _aim to_ create on purpose.  If you want to _start_ a
>> separate history, and if you are sane, you would start the separate
>> history in a separate repository.
>
> Agreed. Let's not worry about it, then.
>
> -Peff