Re: [PATCH v2] sequencer: beautify subject of reverts of reverts

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 18, 2023, 16:28 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqmt21txid.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <10523968-0f02-f483-69c4-24e62e839f70@gmail.com>

Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com> writes:

Show 14 quoted lines

>>> (i.e. at that point we stop trying to be clever) rather than
>>>
>>>     Revert "Reapply "Revert some subject""
>>>
>> right.
>>
>> how about filing that under GIGO and extending the comment?
>> i mean, when you actually run into this situation, you should be
>> re-thinking your life choices rather than stressing about git
>> producing a somewhat suboptimal commit message template ...
>
> Given that it is simple to handle this case and Junio is expecting a
> re-roll of this topic[1] then I think it would be worth just adding
> those three lines.

Phillip, your first message with these three lines were a bit dense to understand (in other words, to me, it did not immediately "click" how these lines contribute to avoiding the revert-reapply-revert sequence that is awkward).

But after reading the exchange bewteen you two [*], your suggestion makes quite a lot of sense to me. It is better for a code to behave in a dumb but explainable way, than to attempting and failing to act too clever for its own worth.

Oswald, I do not think GIGO is really an excuse in this case, when the only value of the topic is to make the behaviour less awkward by creating something better than a repeated revert-revert sequence, revert-reapply-revert is worse, as it is markedly harder to guess what it really means for a reversion of revert-revert-revert than "revert" repeated four times. If anything, it is the cleverness of "lets call revert of revert a reapply" code without Phillip's suggestion that creates a garbage output, no?

Thanks.

[Footnote]

 * Oswald, please refrain from using Mail-Followup-To; I wanted to
   deliver the contents of this message specifically to you and
   Phillip, but Phillip's MUA followed your Mail-Followup-To and
   lost your address, which made me look it up and add it myself.

   Please refer to these first before saying "I use it because..."
   if you are going to respond:

   https://lore.kernel.org/git/7v4pndfjym.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net/
   https://lore.kernel.org/git/7vei7zjr3y.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org/