Re: [PATCH] rebase -i: only automatically amend commit if HEAD did not change

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 06:22:34PM -0400, Avery Pennarun wrote:

This patch is perhaps a symptom of something I've been meaning to ask
about for a while.

Why doesn't "edit" just stage the commit and not auto-commit it at
all?  That way an amend would *never* be necessary, and rebase
--continue would always do a commit -a (if there was anything left to
commit).

Actually, it would be better to refuse to continue if there are unstaged
changes in the work tree, and if all changes are staged then just do git
commit.

The special case fixed by this patch would thus not be
needed.

It would also make it more obvious how to remove files from a commit,
for example, without having to learn about "git reset".  For that
matter, you wouldn't have to learn about "git commit --amend" either,
and it would save typing.

It would not only save typing, but also help to avoid costly mistakes
where users, being taught to use "git commit --amend" after editing
during git-rebase, fire this command automatically after a conflict
resolution and get two commits accidently squashed.

So, I completely agree that the current auto-commit behavior is not very
user friendly...

Dmitry