Re: [PATCH] rebase -i: fixup fixup! fixup!

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Andrew Pimlott [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Excerpts from Andrew Pimlott's message of Fri Jun 14 12:31:57 -0700 2013:

quoted

It happened to work and I added a test.  But then it occurred to me that
it might have been better to fix commit --fixup/--squash to strip the
fixup! or squash! from the referenced commit in the first place.
Anyhow, below is my patch for --autosquash, but unles someone has an
objection to doing it in commit, I'll work on that.

...
If you strip out the prefix when you make commits, you may lose the
information if you want to use in order to express these different
orders.

One design principle I would use as a yardstick is to see any code
that deliberately lose information to achieve something as highly
suspicious.  You can discard extra information when you read and
use, if you do not need it, but if you do not record it in the first
place, you cannot later enhance the reader to take advantage of it.

In general, whenever you see yourself _discarding_ information to
solve an issue, you should carefully ask yourself if that is the
right solution.

I wish we can make sure contributors can learn various design
principles we have benefited from over the course of this project
much better.

But it is a bit difficult to _teach_ others.

Writing them down is difficult, not because the rules are vague, but
because they are like air.  I am sure regular contributors with good
design taste share this sentiment.

You will know a violation of them when you see one, you naturally
stick to them yourself without even having to think about them, but
enumerating them without seeing concrete issues takes effort.

And this "lets squash multiple --fixup/--squash" happened to realize
that "we try not to deliberately lose information" is one of them.

Thanks.