changing history once public

I think I understand the issue with changing history on branches that
have been made public.

What is the negative of publishing a branch and not being able to apply
history changing commands?

If I want to keep this branch current (in public), I would pull from the
tracking branch resolve conflicts and push to my public repo.  This
action leaves my commit as the parent of another commit; it is not
longer at HEAD.  Does it matter if my commit is no longer HEAD of my
branch?

I think the downside of not keeping my branch current is that I'd be
handing off to my colleagues the task of resolving merge conflicts.  Is
that right?

Thanks,
John

John J. Franey wrote:

I think I understand the issue with changing history on branches that
have been made public.

What is the negative of publishing a branch and not being able to apply
history changing commands?

If there is something in that history you want to "remove",
it must be done as an inverse patch, or an additional "removal"
patch.  You can't just change the history by backing it up and
writing it differently.

If I want to keep this branch current (in public), I would pull from the
tracking branch resolve conflicts and push to my public repo. 

Right.

This
action leaves my commit as the parent of another commit; it is not
longer at HEAD.  Does it matter if my commit is no longer HEAD of my
branch?

Uh, by definition HEAD is the current-most commit on your
active branch, right?

HTH,
jdl