Re: [PATCH/RFC] Support --append-trailer in cherry-pick and revert

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 8, 2018, 00:36 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqh8gs9zh3.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8DTdW-P9zG3DBPArjhZU1VwwBmd7qNibyHxYkyjRrdWmw@mail.gmail.com>

Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> There is still one thing to settle. "revert -m1" could produce
> something like this
>
>     This reverts commit <SHA1>, reversing
>     changes made to <SHA2>.

I do not think it is relevant, with or without multiple parents, to even attempt to read this message.

The description is not meant to be machine readable/parseable, but is meant to be updated to describe the reason why the reversion was made for human readers. Spending any cycle to attempt interpreting it by machines will give a wrong signal to encourage people not to touch it. Instead we should actively encourage people to take that as the beginning of their description.

I even suspect that an update to that message to read something like these

	"This reverts commit <SHA-1> because FILL IN THE REASONS HERE"

	"This reverts commit <SHA-1>, reversing changes made to
	 <SHA-1>, because FILL IN THE REASONS HERE"

would be a good idea. It of course is orthogonal to the topic of introducing a new footer to record the "what happened" (without the "why") in a machine-readable way.