Re: Feature idea: git rebase --exec $CMD

From: dag@cray.com <dag@cray.com>
Date: May 23, 2012, 15:50 UTC
Message-ID: <nngliki3nib.fsf@transit.us.cray.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpqd35udhwq.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>

Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

>> I took that and turned it into a git-run-command subcommand.  It will
>> take an arbitrary command and run it on each revision specified by a
>> revlist.
>
> That's sensible too. The nice things with running commands in "git
> rebase" are:
>
> * It's likely to be the place where you want to run some tests. The
>   typical use-case is that you have a patch serie whose last revision
>   passes tests, and you want to check that intermediate commits also do.

Yep, I have done that many times using the above-mentioned script (obviously not during rebase).

> * if the "exec" command fails, you're likely to be exactly in the right
>   place to fix it: fix the bug, run "git commit --amend", and "git
>   rebase --continue".

That's a good point.

> The nice thing with your approach (as I understand it) is that it
> doesn't require rewritting history, and may apply to all commits in
> non-linear history.

Exactly. I think there is room for both. The downside to git-run-command (besides the name) is that it forcibly checks out revisions in the current workarea so one has to be careful about unstaged and/or uncommitted changes. I could change the behavior to checkout in some /tmp workarea or something.

                                -Dave