Re: User's mailing list? And multiple cherry pick

From: Wincent Colaiuta <win@wincent.com>
Date: Jun 4, 2008, 09:39 UTC
Message-ID: <D11EAC1A-B59E-4857-A31F-809809310E40@wincent.com>
In-Reply-To: <18c1e6480806040130k3851a89an3fcf986feb661226@mail.gmail.com>

El 4/6/2008, a las 10:30, David escribió:

Show 18 quoted lines

> Thanks :-) This still isn't what I had in mind (see my earlier post
> with examples), but I realise now, thanks to your post, that I can
> probably do it like this:
>
> 1) Make a temporary branch off the topic
>
> 2) Rebase the temporary branch onto master interactively (maybe or
> maybe not with --onto), and in interactive mode take out, reorder,
> etc.
>
> 3) Check & test the temporary branch
>
> 4) Merge the temporary branch into master, and drop the temporary  
> branch.
>
> 5) Rebase the original topic branch onto the new master.
>
> Thanks to all the posters for their tips.

Sounds like it would definitely work but it also sounds like a lot of repetitive "busy work"[1] which could be avoided by using finer- grained topic branches in the first place.

In the basic case Git makes it incredibly easy to split off topic branches and merge them back in, and when you do this you're working in synergy with the tool. But while what you're wanting to do is certainly possible you can also see that it has a lot of fiddly, error- prone overhead in which you're juggling temporary branches and commits back and forth in a complicated way. Not working in synergy with the tool.

I know that I'd soon get tied of this "busy work" if I had to do it; maybe with time you'll be able to transition to a style in which you make more, smaller topic branches, which can really be treated as logically-grouped topics and merged in as a whole rather than sifted out into separate sub-topics.

Having said that, the ability to pass multiple commits or ranges of commits to "git cherry-pick" is a logical enough enhancement, if someone is interested enough in this feature to actually do the work.

Wincent

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_work