Re: rsync update appears broken now

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Oct 20, 2005, 17:48 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0510201038320.3369@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <81b0412b0510200608l61c00ed0yd4dbc00c313665fe@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, Alex Riesen wrote:

> 
> Absolutely normal pull into a changed repository. Just fix the
> conflict (in fetch-pack.c, look for >>>), git-update-index the file
> and commit. Doesn't look like a problem at all.

No, that's wrong.

The fact is, Junio has screwed up his repository, and if you merge, you'll never have something that matches _his_ repository.

To fix this, _Junio_ needs to fix his repository.

For those of us who have a separate branch to track the original (I call mine "parent), this tells the story:

	* refs/heads/parent: does not fast forward to branch 'master' of master.kernel.org:/pub/scm/git/git;
	  not updating.

IOW, it looks like Junio has screwed up his "master" branch on kernel.org and it no longer contains what it used to contain (and this is not a mirroring problem - I'm using "master.kernel.org" with no mirrors in between).

Doing a

	git fetch parent master:new-junio

followed by a

	gitk parent new-junio

shows that Junio seems to have re-based his "master" branch by removing his old top-most entry, and restarted the "master" branch, which is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Junio, please don't do that. It really screws people up. Now people can't fetch your head any more, and can't track you, because your branch isn't stable any more. I know you're very used to doing so in your "pu" branch, but it's _wrong_. It's wrong in "pu" too, but at least there you have an excuse.

Reparenting things is ok in _private_ branches, but it's not ok in public ones, since _others_ will have worked or at least downloaded the previous state.

The fact is, "distributed" fundamentally means "mistakes cannot be undone". Mistakes have to be _fixed_, not removed. Because the mistakes have already percolated to others.

			Linus