Re: [RFC/PATCH] format-patch: introduce branch.*.forkedFrom

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 7, 2014, 21:35 UTC
Message-ID: <CALkWK0=UkWEGhU6D8CQctdgTvZUUj276LSuNhSmRUMZ5mwZTeA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20140107211645.GC28102@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> I definitely respect the desire to reuse the existing tooling we have
> for @{u}. At the same time, I think you are warping the meaning of
> @{u} somewhat. It is _not_ your upstream here, but rather another
> version of the branch that has useful changes in it. That might be
> splitting hairs a bit, but I think you will find that the differences
> leak through in inconvenient spots (like format-patch, where you really
> _do_ want to default to the true upstream).

Thanks for the clear reasoning.

> If we add "@{publish}" (and "@{pu}"), then it becomes very convenient to
> refer to the ram/ version of your branch. That seems like an obvious
> first step to me. We don't have to add new config, because
> "branch.*.pushremote" already handles this.

Agreed. I'll start working on @{publish}. It's going to take quite a bit of effort, because I won't actually start using it until my prompt is @{publish}-aware.

Show 6 quoted lines

> Now you can do "git rebase @{pu}" which is nice, but not _quite_ as nice
> as "git rebase", which defaults to "@{u}". That first step might be
> enough, and I'd hold off there and try it out for a few days or weeks
> first. But if you find in your workflow that you are having to specify
> "@{pu}" a lot, then maybe it is worth adding an option to default rebase
> to "@{pu}" instead of "@{u}".

Actually, I'm not sure I'd use "git rebase @{pu}"; for me @{pu} is mainly a source of information for taking apart to build a new series.