Re: [PATCH] pull: conflict hint pull.rebase suggestion should offer "merges" vs "true"

From: Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 20, 2023, 18:33 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMMLpeSZs8DqrN6_F9-eg7fcbjV-O5+3V+hUsOhyd0x10xsCaQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CABPp-BEtXf9ja7Ec1fZ=BZwFDa+50zSAhtm3nN_=k+Nc2c=RXw@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Feb 5, 2023 at 9:41 AM Tao Klerks via GitGitGadget <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> wrote:

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>
> From: Tao Klerks <tao@klerks.biz>
>
> Unfortunately, this rebase configuration can easily lead to non-expert users
> accidentally rebasing not their own commits, instead others' commits, if the
> new commits they have locally before the "pull" include a merge of another
> branch, eg "main".

On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 10:21 AM Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com> wrote:

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> When we teach new folks about git, and get to rebasing, there is a
> simple and easy rule to tell users: don't mix merges and rebases.
> (There's a minor exception there in that merges with the upstream
> branch are fine and rebasing can let you get rid of those otherwise
> ugly-and-frequent back-merges that users sometimes make.)

The "minor exception" is merging a topic branch into main, right? And the "ugly-and-frequent back-merges" are the merges from main into a topic branch?

Tao, the primary motivation behind the `git pull` warning was to help prevent users from merging main into a topic branch when that's not what they really want to do. The fact that novices sometimes do that has been a point of pain for many people, including Linus Torvalds: See "Don't merge upstream code at random points" at [1] and "github creates absolutely useless garbage merges" at [2].

If you're seeing users merge main into topic branches without a good reason, that does sound like more of an education problem than a bad-defaults problem. We might still want to change the default to better support the more unusual cases, but if you're going for a quick win, it would be faster to teach users the wisdom of not mixing rebase and merge in the first place.

-Alex

[1] https://www.mail-archive.com/dri-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg39091.html [2] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjbtip559HcMG9VQLGPmkurh5Kc50y5BceL8Q8=aL0H3Q@mail.gmail.com/