Re: [PATCH 2/3] git-gui: Add the ability to revert selected lines

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 23, 2019, 16:28 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqk1b3n8vv.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.1908231500030.46@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> Maybe the direction taken by this discussion merely suggests that the
> design is a bit unfortunate. Why "revert"? Why not "stash" instead? Then
> you don't need to have that annoying confirmation dialog.

Interesting, but it would need a bit more tweak than a simple "stash" for it to be truly helpful, I would imagine.

The primary purpose of stashing from end user's point of view is to save some changes, that are not immediately usable in the context of the corrent work, away, so that they can be retrieved later, with a side effect of wiping the stashed changes from the working tree. The command could be (re|ab)used to wipe local changes you have in the working tree, but that would accumulate cruft that you most of the time (unless you make a mistake) wanted to discard and wanted to never look at again in the stash. If done using the same 'stash' ref that is used by the normal "git stash", the stash entries created by "git stash" because the user really wanted to keep them for later use would be drowned among these "kept just in case" stash entries that were created as a side effect of (ab)using stash in place of "restore".

But "git stash" can be told to use a different ref, so perhaps by using a separate one for this "just in case" purpose, with the expectation that the entries are almost always safe to discard unless the user made a mistake and take it back immediately (i.e. "undo"), it would not hurt the normal use of "git stash" *and* give the "revert" necessary safety valve at the same time.

Thanks.