Re: Is rebase --force-rebase any different from rebase --no-ff?

From: Marc Branchaud <marcnarc@xiplink.com>
Date: May 9, 2018, 19:27 UTC
Message-ID: <98279912-0f52-969d-44a6-22242039387f@xiplink.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAGZ79kb05U91_Ku7DKuwQVCrtouYwGWTCPdJFQ=bgWo91inRGA@mail.gmail.com>

On 2018-05-09 02:21 PM, Stefan Beller wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> +cc Marc and Johannes who know more about rebase.
> 
> On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 9:01 AM, Ilya Kantor <iliakan@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Right now in "git help rebase" for --no-ff:
>> "Without --interactive, this is a synonym for --force-rebase."
>>
>> But *with* --interactive, is there any difference?
> 
> I found
> https://code.googlesource.com/git/+/b499549401cb2b1f6c30d09681380fd519938eb0
> from 2010-03-24

In the original discussion around this option [1], at one point I proposed teaching rebase--interactive to respect --force-rebase instead of adding a new option [2]. Ultimately --no-ff was chosen as the better user interface design [3], because an interactive rebase can't be "forced" to run.

At the time, I think rebase--interactive only recognized --no-ff. That might have been muddled a bit in the migration to rebase--helper.c.

Looking at it now, I don't have a strong opinion about keeping both options or deprecating one of them.

M.

[1] https://public-inbox.org/git/4B9FD9C1.9060200@xiplink.com/t/ [2] https://public-inbox.org/git/1269361187-31291-1-git-send-email-marcnarc@xiplink.com/ [3] https://public-inbox.org/git/7vzl1yd5j4.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org/

Show 19 quoted lines

>      Teach rebase the --no-ff option.
> 
>      For git-rebase.sh, --no-ff is a synonym for --force-rebase.
> 
>      For git-rebase--interactive.sh, --no-ff cherry-picks all the commits in
>      the rebased branch, instead of fast-forwarding over any unchanged commits.
> 
>      --no-ff offers an alternative way to deal with reverted merges.  Instead of
>      "reverting the revert" you can use "rebase --no-ff" to recreate the branch
>      with entirely new commits (they're new because at the very least the
>      committer time is different).  This obviates the need to revert the
>      reversion, as you can re-merge the new topic branch directly.  Added an
>      addendum to revert-a-faulty-merge.txt describing the situation and how to
>      use --no-ff to handle it.
> 
> which sounds as if there is?
> 
> Stefan
>