Re: [RFC/PATCH] rebase--interactive: Add "sign" command

Hi Chris,

On Wed, 3 Aug 2016, Chris Packham wrote:

This is similar to the existing "reword" command in that it can be used
to update the commit message the difference is that the editor presented
to the user for the commit. It provides a useful shorthand for "exec git
commit --amend --no-edit -s"

I can understand how this "sign" command helps you. I myself wished for
new commands when working on my Git garden shears [*1*] (essentially, what
git rebase --interactive --preserve-merges *should* have been).

My solution was to introduce a new fake editor that calls the real editor
and afterwards converts the "new" commands into exec lines.

Having said that, this patch clashes seriously with my current effort to
move a lot of the interactive rebase from shell into plain C. It is
actually ready, but getting this into the code base is really slow-going,
unfortunately.

Now, after looking at your patch it looks to me as if this would be easily
ported, so there is not a big deal here.

However, I could imagine that we actually want this to be more extensible.
After all, all you are doing is to introduce a new rebase -i command that
does nothing else than shelling out to a command. Why not introduce a much
more flexible feature, where you add something like "rebase -i aliases"?

Maybe something like this:

[rebase "command"]
	sign = git commit --amend -s --no-post-rewrite --no-edit -S

I have not completely thought this through, but maybe this direction would
make the interactive rebase even more powerful?

Ciao,
Johannes