Re: [RFC] sequencer: allow metadata to be saved if using cherry-pick --no-commit

Edmundo Carmona Antoranz <eantoranz@gmail.com> writes:

This cuts both ways, though.

I often use the "--no-commit" form of the command as a better version of the 'git show $that_commit | git apply --index' pipeline, and what I'll do starting from the working tree that I prepare that way is often *not* to commit it exactly or even use any data from the original commit.

So a change like this would make the use of the command for my usecase more cumbersome---now it leaves cruft behind, so I need to clean it up later, but with what? "cherry-pick --abort" would try to muck with the index and the working tree, but that is not definitely what I want.

So, personally, I am fairly negative on this line of change. If the user says upfront "--no-commit", then user does not want a commit, so why should we even allow "--continue"?

Before dismissing the idea totally, let's see what potential use cases this change _could_ benefit, and see if there are already ways to satisfy these use cases without making this change. For example, if the user wants to examine the result before actually "committing" to move the target branch forward with this change, keeping it an option to back out if the result of cherry-picking turns out to be bad, the "--no-commit first, examine, and --continue or --abort" sequence may help such a workflow.

But the user can already do so without this change:

    $ git checkout target_branch^0 ;#detach
    $ git cherry-pick source_branch
    ... examine the result ...
    ... and if it is satisfactory ...
    $ git checkout -B target_branch
    ... or if it is not, then discard ...
    $ git checkout target_branch