From: Johannes Schindelin Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:37:26 GMT Subject: Re: Trying to use git-filter-branch to compress history by removing large, obsolete binary files Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20071008163701.GA5868@thunk.org> Hi, On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Theodore Tso wrote: > On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 10:36:50AM -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote: > > Having it by default leave these backups around, even when everything > > succeeds, makes for unnecessary cleanup work in the normal case, and is > > inconsistent with the behavior of other git commands that destroy or > > rewrite history. > > I think what makes git-filter-branch different is that you can change a > large amount of history with git-filter-branch, including large numbers > of tags, etc. The reflog is quite sufficient to recover from a screwed > up "git commit --amend". > > [...] > > But I don't think the reflog is going to be sufficient given the kinds > of changes that git-filter-branch can potentially do to your repository. FWIW after reading Bruce's reasoning, I tend towards having no "backups" by default (I say "backups", since they are _only_ written when the respective branch has changed). And I do not think that the config variable is a good approach; if you want backups or not is a per-case decision. So your proposal would only result in even more confusion. My preference ATM is to write nothing per default, but only when --original was given. Ciao, Dscho