Re: git rebase command and docs questions

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 5:23 PM, Sverre Rabbelier [off-list ref] wrote:

Heya,

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 23:11, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Hmm, re*base* means "change the base to _this one_"; the above is more
like "replay these on master", which is often a useful operation but is
different.

Yes, I guess that's true.

I'm a bit confused. Isn't the rebase actually replaying the commits
one by one starting from new base instead of old one?
I believe it does apply diffs one by one, else there would be no
conflicts during rebase whatsoever.
Secondly, git complains about range not specified if you will try to
execute something like

git rebase --onto  master topic

when topic is not direct descendant of master.
Git will say "not a range".

So, That's why i make a conclusion that the real meaning of

git rebase --onto master next topic

is very close if not exactly matching the

git rebase --onto master next..topic

quoted

If you _had_ your "replay" command, the workflow for this would be:

   $ git checkout -b maint-fixes origin/maint
   $ git replay origin..fixes

True again.
Yep therefore the interface

quoted

Before somebody else makes useless noises, "cherry-pick" could be a good
command in the existing UI set to do that kind of thing.

I still think the UI for --onto is awkward. At the very least it should be:

git rebase --fork-at=origin origin/maint fixes

Or something like that. Since currently you suddenly have to specify
an argument to --onto that was previously positional. Does that make
sense?

Case 1:
git rebase origin fixes
git rebase <new_base> <tip>

Case 2:
git rebase --onto origin/maint origin fixes
git rebase --onto=<new_base> <fork_point> <tip>

I know that in the --onto case <new_base> is not an argument to
--onto, but that's what it looks/feels like.

How is that possible that it is not an argument to --onto???

from docs:

SYNOPSIS

git rebase [-i | --interactive] [options] [--onto <newbase>]
        <upstream> [<branch>]
git rebase [-i | --interactive] [options] --onto <newbase>
        --root [<branch>]
git rebase --continue | --skip | --abort

When i'm executing
git rebase --onto master next topic

master is exactly the new base, new fork point for topic, which was
previously forked from next!

Said differently, it's
just _really weird_ that a new argument (for a different mode) shows
up between two other arguments. It should either be at the beginning,
or at the end, but in the middle is just awkward, no?

So another solution might be to change the position of the
<fork_point> in the --onto case.

--
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier