Re: [RFC/PATCH 5/6] revert: add --ff option to allow fast forward when cherry-picking
From: Christian Couder <hidden>
Date: 2016-06-15 22:48:09
On lundi 01 février 2010, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
On 02/01/2010 01:43 PM, Christian Couder wrote:quoted
Maybe it could be the default, but in this case it should be made compatible with -n option (and perhaps other options) for backward compatibility, and this would probably need more involved changes.A better objection is that GIT_COMMITTER_* is respected by |git cherry-pick" but not by "git cherry-pick --ff",
Yes, indeed! Good catch!
and that even without setting the variables, "git cherry-pick" will pick a new commit date but "git cherry-pick --ff" wouldn't. The latter, I think is the only difference that is worth pondering further.
Because --no-ff could be used when the GIT_COMMITTER_* and GIT_AUTHOR_* env variable should be respected? Or because we should check if one of these env variable is set and, if that is the case, we should not fast forward? As I think it would be a big backward incompatibility to force people to update their scripts to add --no-ff, I think you probably suggest the latter. This mean that we could have both --ff and --no-ff. --ff could force fast forward even if some of the above env variables are set. --no-ff would disable fast forward even if none of the above env variable is set.
My impression is that a user would never have any problem with fast-forwarding. For scripts probably the same is true (the typical scenario for scripts is probably very similar to what "git rebase -i" does), but it can still be a potential backwards-incompatibility in case the script is *expecting* cherry-picking to generate a new SHA1. How broken can we consider this expectation?
I am not too worried by this expectation, but I think that, as it looks like we will need --ff anyway, it is safer to start by implementing --ff like I did and then later we can implement --no-ff and change the default (when neither --ff nor --no-ff is used) to look at env variables (or config variables) to decide if we will fast forward or not.
That said, to reply to your question, of course -n would disable it, and so would -x, -s and possibly -e. But then, the same applies to --ff: your patch forbids "-n --ff", but -x, -s and -e would need the same treatment.
Yeah, I will add the same treatment for these options.
Note that "-e --ff" would error out; however if --ff would be the default, "-e" would probably choose between fast-forward and non-fast-forward depending on whether the commit message was edited.
Yeah, but let's change the default later please. Thanks, Christian.