threads / discuss / 12191

rebase --onto might "loose" commits

Subject: rebase --onto might "loose" commits

## tl;dr

4 messages between Feb 19, 2008 and Feb 19, 2008.

replies: 3people: 3as markdown or json

Björn Steinbrink· Feb 19, 2008, 07:23 UTC · lore

Hi,

when there's nothing to rebase (ie. upstream..branch is empty), rebase fails to find any commits to rebase and correctly says "Nothing to do", but when --onto is given, we already did a "reset --hard" to newbase, so it already _did_ something.

As rebase also shows a "fatal: Not a range", during the operation, I assume that this is an actual bug and not just a plain user error.

A test script is attached.

Thank, Björn

Johannes Schindelin· Feb 19, 2008, 11:05 UTC · re: Björn Steinbrink · lore

Re: rebase --onto might "loose" commits

Hi,

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Björn Steinbrink wrote:

> when there's nothing to rebase (ie. upstream..branch is empty), rebase 
> fails to find any commits to rebase and correctly says "Nothing to do", 
> but when --onto is given, we already did a "reset --hard" to newbase, so 
> it already _did_ something.

Yes, it did something.  But if you had that:

A - B - C - D - E
  \
    F

your HEAD was E, and you said "git rebase --onto F E" what exactly do you want it to do? There is no commit between E and E, so it rebases _nothing_ onto F. Which means that F should be your new state.

Unless I am missing something critical in your mail.

> As rebase also shows a "fatal: Not a range", during the operation, I 
> assume that this is an actual bug and not just a plain user error.

That message is probably a bug, then.

Ciao, Dscho

P.S.: I was being corrected some time ago on the same typo: "to lose" means to get rid of something unintentionally, "to loose" does not exist, and "to loosen" means to make something less tight.

Björn Steinbrink· Feb 19, 2008, 12:52 UTC · re: Johannes Schindelin · lore

Re: rebase --onto might "loose" commits

Hi,

On 2008.02.19 11:05:40 +0000, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Björn Steinbrink wrote:
> 
> > when there's nothing to rebase (ie. upstream..branch is empty), rebase 
> > fails to find any commits to rebase and correctly says "Nothing to do", 
> > but when --onto is given, we already did a "reset --hard" to newbase, so 
> > it already _did_ something.
> 
> Yes, it did something.  But if you had that:
> 
> A - B - C - D - E
>   \
>     F
> 
> your HEAD was E, and you said "git rebase --onto F E" what exactly do you
> want it to do?  There is no commit between E and E, so it rebases
> _nothing_ onto F.  Which means that F should be your new state.

Strictly, it's correct, but the "Nothing to do" message is a bit misleading (IMHO) and the error message made me think, that it actually didn't want to do anything.

I'm a bit unsure about rebase being degraded to a "reset --hard" in this case is a good idea. Might be a nice user-protection to make rebase abort when there's nothing to rebase and --onto is given. But I don't care that much.

Thanks, Björn

> P.S.: I was being corrected some time ago on the same typo: "to lose" 
> means to get rid of something unintentionally, "to loose" does not exist, 
> and "to loosen" means to make something less tight.

Ah yeah, one of my preferred typos. There's about a 50% chance for me to get that right. Although it already felt wrong when I read over the mail, for some unknown reason I couldn't put my finger on the typo. ;-)

Nicolas Pitre· Feb 19, 2008, 14:43 UTC · re: Björn Steinbrink · lore

Re: rebase --onto might "loose" commits

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Björn Steinbrink wrote:

Show 23 quoted lines

> Hi,
> 
> On 2008.02.19 11:05:40 +0000, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Björn Steinbrink wrote:
> > 
> > > when there's nothing to rebase (ie. upstream..branch is empty), rebase 
> > > fails to find any commits to rebase and correctly says "Nothing to do", 
> > > but when --onto is given, we already did a "reset --hard" to newbase, so 
> > > it already _did_ something.
> > 
> > Yes, it did something.  But if you had that:
> > 
> > A - B - C - D - E
> >   \
> >     F
> > 
> > your HEAD was E, and you said "git rebase --onto F E" what exactly do you
> > want it to do?  There is no commit between E and E, so it rebases
> > _nothing_ onto F.  Which means that F should be your new state.
> 
> Strictly, it's correct, but the "Nothing to do" message is a bit
> misleading (IMHO) and the error message made me think, that it actually
> didn't want to do anything.

Yes, the message should probably be changed in that case.

> I'm a bit unsure about rebase being degraded to a "reset --hard" in this
> case is a good idea. Might be a nice user-protection to make rebase
> abort when there's nothing to rebase and --onto is given. But I don't
> care that much.

The "reset --hard" in that case is really the correct behavior. Rebase might be used like 'git pull --rebase', and if your local branch contains no commits of your own then the 'git reset --hard' is really what needs to happen.

The "user protection" lives in the reflog.

Nicolas