Re: notes.rewriteRef doesn't apply to rebases that skip the commit

Kevin Ballard [off-list ref] writes:

I’ve started using notes recently, and I have notes.rewriteRef set so that
when I rebase, my notes will be kept. Unfortunately, it turns out that if a
rebase deletes my local commit because it already exists in upstream, it
doesn’t copy the note to the upstream commit. It seems perfectly reasonable to
me to expect the note to be copied to the upstream commit, as it represents
the same change.

That would cut both ways, depending on the use case.  I suspect that
those who use notes as remainder of what are still to be sent out
would appreciate the current behaviour.

One complication I can see is when my local commit is deleted not because it
exists upstream, but because it ends up being an empty commit due to the
changes existing across multiple upstream commits. In this case I see no
alternative but to have the note disappear. But I think that's acceptable.

Oh, no question about that.

Another potential issues is if the commit exists upstream, but the surrounding
context has changed enough that it contains a different patch-id. In this
case, I would want Git to take the extra effort to correlate the upstream
commit with my local one (it has the same message, modulo any Signed-Off-By
lines, the same authorship info, and all the - and + lines in the diff are
identical).

That would be an orthogonal improvement, I would think.  Such a
smarter "patch-id may mistake it, but it is a moral equivalent"
detection would not only be useful for copying notes, but also for
skipping the commit from getting replayed in the first place, no?

On a semi-related note, I don't see why Git should be warning about
notes.displayRef evaluating to a reference that doesn't exist. It doesn't
exist because I haven't created any notes for that ref in this repository yet.
But that doesn't mean I won't be creating them eventually, and when I do I
want them to be displayed.

That also cuts both ways. I think a warning is primarily to let
those who mistyped the refname take notice.