Re: [PATCH] prune: mark rebase autostash and orig-head as reachable

From: Phil Hord <phil.hord@gmail.com>
Date: May 14, 2024, 19:37 UTC
Message-ID: <CABURp0oNyOcrDySmMtbnGrFLuWWUybeo7-osS4NqPNBD3wKdaA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqmssan841.fsf@gitster.g>

On Thu, Feb 8, 2024 at 10:08 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

>
> "Phillip Wood via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Rebase records the oid of HEAD before rebasing and the commit created by
> > "--autostash" in files in the rebase state directory. This means that

...

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> I do not like this kind of special casing in general, but because
> these are our tools' droppings, I am OK to grandfather them in, as
> long as we promise ourselves that we will not add more of these
> ad-hoc "text files" that record object names, loss of which affects
> correctness.  They should, like "git bisect", be using proper
> references to protect these objects instead, of course.

I have long wanted to have a special ref named "AUTOSTASH" since it supports my workflow of applying workdir changes to previous commits during a rebase. For example, I often do this:

     $ git rebase -i
     Created autostash: c0ffeebea0
     ...
     <stopped to edit some commit in my history>
     $ git stash apply c0ffeebea0
     $ git commit --amend && git rebase --continue

But it requires me to find the text output after "Created autostash:"
from the original rebase command which may have scrolled a lot by now.
It would be easier to say:
     $ git stash apply AUTOSTASH

I see that MERGE_AUTOSTASH has been added lately. And I am inferring that there's a desire to remove (eventually) these file-based info trackers such as "rebase-apply/autostash". Is there any reason not to raise the rebase/autostash notation to a proper ref now? Should it be named REBASE_AUTOSTASH if I add this?

Even if we don't remove the file-based notation immediately "rebase-apply/autostash", I would like to add a ref that duplicates the information for my workflow. Maybe we can deprecate the file itself and remove it in some future version.