Re: [PATCH] git-rebase.sh: Use POSIX/Susv command substitution instead of backticks

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

And then you have to do it for all scripts in one go.  Mind you, it is not 
really complicated: just one call to perl.

Please do not do this.  If other people have pending changes,
"cleanup for clean-up's sake" would create conflicts for no good
reason.

There are only two cases such a clean-up patch is good:

 (1) When the maintainer is not yet accepting any patches after
     a release-freeze and there is no pending patches from the
     community, and/or if you can convince people with pending
     patches to rebase on top of the clean-up because the
     current codebase is so unmaintainably bad, then a
     whole-tree clean-up patch should go in before anything
     else, forcing everybody to rebase on top of it;

 (2) If you will be working on the code in an area, you may want
     to have the first one in the series a "pure clean-up and
     nothing else" of the whole area, and then build your real
     changes on top.  You still need to coordinate with people
     whose patches may get hit by your clean-ups, but you have
     to do this anyway because you will have conflicts from your
     "real changes".

Any other "clean-up patch" would result in a not-so-appreciated
code churn.  Please don't encourage it.

Just to make sure Jari does not get a wrong idea,

My "Please don't" is meant against Johannes's "Do it all if you
do it".

If Jari did the patch as the first step of making real changes
to "git rebase" (making -i not forcing -m, perhaps), it is the
right thing to have a clean-up patch as a preparatory step,
before starting the real work in later patches in the series.
And such a clean-up patch should not inflict useless code churn
on other commands.

So a single patch only to git-rebase is acceptable if that is
what Jari is planning to do: preparatory clean-up before
bringing a real improvement in.