Re: [PATCH RFC 2/2] builtin/history: print feedback after successful reword

From: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Date: Jun 8, 2026, 09:30 UTC
Message-ID: <aiaLyQvo8kqfv4js@pks.im>
In-Reply-To: <20260607-ps-history-reword-v1-2-ba43a3cbb81b@gmail.com>

On Sun, Jun 07, 2026 at 10:07:21PM +0200, Pablo Sabater wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Unlike `git commit --amend` and `git rebase -i`, `git history reword`
> doesn't print anything, this makes it feel empty for a porcelain command
> and hard to tell if the command did anything without using other
> commands like `git log <commit>` to check if the reword was done.
> 
> Print a message on successful rewords so the user has feedback about it.

I dunno about this one. My take here is that a command should be silent unless it has something to say, for example when it couldn't honor the user's request [1].

Show 12 quoted lines

> diff --git a/builtin/history.c b/builtin/history.c
> index 51a22a9a1c..0f1ba3b531 100644
> --- a/builtin/history.c
> +++ b/builtin/history.c
> @@ -739,6 +739,10 @@ static int cmd_history_reword(int argc,
>  		goto out;
>  	}
>  
> +	fprintf(stderr, _("Successfully reworded commit %s to %s\n"),
> +		repo_find_unique_abbrev(repo, &original->object.oid, DEFAULT_ABBREV),
> +		repo_find_unique_abbrev(repo, &rewritten->object.oid, DEFAULT_ABBREV));
> +

Seeing the implementation also raises a couple of questions:

  - Why do we mention the rewritten commit, only? Shouldn't we also
    print the changed HEAD?

  - Why don't we print any of the other rewritten branches?

  - What makes "git history reword" so special as compared to for
    example "git history fixup" or "git history split" so that it needs
    a message while the others don't?

It might make sense to maybe introduce a verbose mode where we do print such information. But if so, we should have good answers to the above questions and implement this in a way that makes sense for the other subcommands, too, so that we can apply the same principle to all of them.

Thanks!

Patrick

[1]: https://www.linfo.org/rule_of_silence.html