Re: [PATCH 2/8] sequencer: introduce the `merge` command

Hi Jake & Phillip,

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

On Sat, 20 Jan 2018, Jacob Keller wrote:

quoted

On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 6:45 AM, Phillip Wood [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On 18/01/18 15:35, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

quoted

This patch adds the `merge` command, with the following syntax:

      merge <commit> <rev> <oneline>

I'm concerned that this will be confusing for users. All of the other
rebase commands replay the changes in the commit hash immediately
following the command name. This command instead uses the first
commit to specify the message which is different to both 'git merge'
and the existing rebase commands. I wonder if it would be clearer to
have 'merge -C <commit> <rev> ...' instead so it's clear which
argument specifies the message and which the remote head to merge.
It would also allow for 'merge -c <commit> <rev> ...' in the future
for rewording an existing merge message and also avoid the slightly
odd 'merge - <rev> ...'. Where it's creating new merges I'm not sure
it's a good idea to encourage people to only have oneline commit
messages by making it harder to edit them, perhaps it could take
another argument to mean open the editor or not, though as Jake said
I guess it's not that common.

I actually like the idea of re-using commit message options like -C,
-c,  and -m, so we could do:

merge -C <commit> ... to take message from commit

That is exactly how the Git garden shears do it.

I found it not very readable. That is why I wanted to get away from it in
--recreate-merges.

I made up my mind. Even if it is not very readable, it is still better
than the `merge A B` where the order of A and B magically determines their
respective roles.

quoted

merge -c <commit> ...  to take the message from commit and open editor to edit
merge -m "<message>" ... to take the message from the quoted test
merge ... to merge and open commit editor with default message

I will probably implement -c, but not -m, and will handle the absence of
the -C and -c options to construct a default merge message which can then
be edited.

The -m option just opens such a can of worms with dequoting, that's why I
do not want to do that.

BTW I am still trying to figure out how to present the oneline of the
commit to merge (which is sometimes really helpful because the label might
be less than meaningful) while *still* allowing for octopus merges.

So far, what I have is this:

	merge <original> <to-merge> <oneline>

and for octopus:

	merge <original> "<to-merge> <to-merge2>..." <oneline>...

I think with the -C syntax, it would become something like

	merge -C <original> <to-merge> # <oneline>

and

	merge -C <original> <to-merge> <to-merge2>...
	# Merging: <oneline>
	# Merging: <oneline2>
	# ...

The only qualm I have about this is that `#` really *is* a valid ref name.
(Seriously, it is...). So that would mean that I'd have to disallow `#`
as a label specificially.

Thoughts?

Ciao,
Dscho