Re: [PATCH 5/8] rebase: introduce the --recreate-merges option

On Tue, Feb 6, 2018 at 10:16 PM, Sergey Organov [off-list ref] wrote:

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

[...]

quoted

+--recreate-merges::
+     Recreate merge commits instead of flattening the history by replaying
+     merges. Merge conflict resolutions or manual amendments to merge
+     commits are not preserved.

I wonder why you guys still hold on replaying "merge-the-operation"
instead of replaying "merge-the-result"? The latter, the merge commit
itself, no matter how exactly it was created in the first place, is the
most valuable thing git keeps about the merge, and you silently drop it
entirely! OTOH, git keeps almost no information about
"merge-the-operation", so it's virtually impossible to reliably replay
the operation automatically, and yet you try to.

I'm not sure I follow what you mean here?

You mean that you'd want this to actually attempt to re-create the
original merge including conflict resolutions by taking the contents
of the result?

How do you handle if that result has conflicts? What UX do you present
to the user to handle such conflicts? I don't think the normal 3-way
conflicts would even be possible in this case?

Thanks,
Jake

IMHO that was severe mistake in the original --preserve-merges, and you
bring with you to this new --recreate-merges... It's sad. Even more sad
as solution is already known for years:

    bc00341838a8faddcd101da9e746902994eef38a
    Author: Johannes Sixt [off-list ref]
    Date:   Sun Jun 16 15:50:42 2013 +0200

        rebase -p --first-parent: redo merge by cherry-picking first-parent change

and it works like a charm.

-- Sergey