Re: git replace: should it check for object type, and can it replace merges?

Christian Couder [off-list ref] writes:

Hi,

On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 5:13 PM, Philip Oakley [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

A recent comment http://stackoverflow.com/a/18027030/717355 on a question I
asked two years ago about 'grafts' and 'replace' indicates that users think
that 'git replace' can't replace a merge commit. The documentation doesn't
have any examples and gives the naive impression that one should only
replace a simple commit with another simple commit.

I am sorry if the documentation gives this impression.
I'd like to fix it, but I am not sure what should be changed.
Should adding an example be enough? Or do you want it to state that explicitely?

quoted

Having looked at the code, I realised that anything can be replaced with
anything, which is perhaps not what was intended.

The documentation says in the "BUGS" section:

"And of course things may break if an object of one type is replaced
by an object of another type (for example a blob replaced by a
commit)."

So yes it is a know bug.

Is that even a BUG?  The users are pretty much asking for it if they
place an object name of a random wrong object themselves.

I agree that a hand-holding wrapper "git replace" could help them to
avoid mistakes, though.