Re: [PATCH v2 0/8] RFC: Server side merges (no ref updating, no commit creating, no touching worktree or index)

From: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 5, 2022, 22:35 UTC
Message-ID: <CABPp-BFHqu6J2TFAwVzBBznhWBi0ESq+hYoytCPXhrYw1d0JAg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq8rvuhr6q.fsf@gitster.g>

On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 12:18 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

>
> "Elijah Newren via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > This series introduces a new option to git-merge-tree: --real (best name I
> > could come up with). This new option is designed to allow a server-side
> > "real" merge (or allow folks client-side to do merges with branches they
> > don't even have checked out).
>
> Finally.  merge-tree was added by Linus mostly as a demonstration of
> idea to trick other developers into enhancing it to implement a full
> merge that does not need to touch the index or the working tree, but
> everybody failed to be enticed by it so far. It is true that it can
> be used server-side, but I do not think that is what we want to sell
> it as (after all, receiving a push, merging it to the history in the
> central repository, and checking the result out to the working tree,
> would be a good "server-side" operation to have, but it can be done
> today without this series).  The selling point would rather be it is
> done mostly in-core, without touching working tree or the index file,
> no?

You're probably right about how we try to sell it as a project to external folks, but I was focused instead on selling it to reviewers within the project.

"Server side merge" was the name of the topic at the Git Summit and lots of folks had interesting comments back then, so I was hoping to grab people's attention with a phrase they would have seen previously and commented on.

Further, the folks I know of who have experience trying to do an in-core merge are folks who operate on the server side (using libgit2 instead of git, which they have some gripes with). I wanted their experience and views in the review and wanted to make sure it met their needs, and tried to highlight that to lure them into responding and reviewing.

> Exciting ;-).

Thanks.  :-)