Re: rebasing trouble

["J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>]

On Thu, Jun 29, 2006 at 03:47:23PM -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> I must be missing something obvious:
> 
> bfields@puzzle:linux-2.6$ git checkout -b TMP nfs-client-stable^^^
> bfields@puzzle:linux-2.6$ git-describe
> v2.6.17-rc6-g28df955
> bfields@puzzle:linux-2.6$ git-rebase --onto v2.6.17 origin
> Nothing to do.
> bfields@puzzle:linux-2.6$ git-describe
> v2.6.17
> 
> So the git-rebase just reset TMP to v2.6.17.  But I know that nfs-client-stable
> isn't a subset of origin, so this doesn't make sense to me.

Oops, sorry, I lied; nfs-client-stable *is* a subset of origin, since Linus
merged it.

But it *isn't* a subset of v2.6.17.

So the semantics of git-rebase just aren't quite what I expected.  It first
removes anything that isn't in the given upstream branch, *then* rebases to the
commit given after --onto.  Which may mean it throws out some stuff that is in
the upstream branch even though it isn't yet included as of the given commit.

So what I really meant to do was just

	git-rebase v2.6.17

And rereading the man page, I see that git-rebase was working exactly as
advertised.  So I'm an idiot.  In my defense, it is a little confusing: none of
the examples in the man page that use --onto actually need it, and the
"upstream" argument probably should be described as a commit or something
instead of a branch.

(What is --onto actually useful for?)

--b.