Re: [PATCH 2/8] Add --unannotate

From: James Nylen <jnylen@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 17, 2013, 21:07 UTC
Message-ID: <CABVa4NhK3FR-NsTq6Vt6yrgneQmMxF5ANmN6pF8k3fHeOLd0JA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <87sj6kfsbz.fsf@waller.obbligato.org>

On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 5:31 PM,  <greened@obbligato.org> wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> "David A. Greene" <greened@obbligato.org> writes:
>>
>>> From: James Nylen <jnylen@gmail.com>
>>>
>>> Teach git-subtree about --unannotate.  This option strips a prefix
>>> from a commit message when doing a subtree split.
>>
>> Hrm.  This looks like a workaround for a short-sighted misdesign of
>> the annotate option that only allowed prefixing a fixed string.  I
>> have to wonder if it is better to deprecate --annotate and replace
>> it with a more general "commit log rewriting" facility that can
>> cover both use cases?
>
> That's not a bad idea.  I'd have to think a bit about a sensible design.
> Do you have any ideas, James?

I just now saw these emails. I'm having a hard time thinking of any good use case other than:

 - add "fancylib" as a subtree of "myprog"
 - commit to myprog repo: "fancylib: don't crash as much"
 - split these commits back out to fancylib's main repo, and remove
the "fancylib: " prefix

You could potentially have something like "Don't crash as much (fancylib)" but that's awkward. What might you want to do with a pattern-based rewrite that doesn't involve removing a prefix when splitting commits?

In fact, I don't see the use of the original --annotate option at all, since it causes more detailed commit messages in the smaller of the two repositories.