Re: [RFC] origin link for cherry-pick and revert, and more about porcelain-level metadata

["Stephen R. van den Berg" <srb@cuci.nl>]

Petr Baudis wrote:
>On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 11:35:18AM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>But that is irrelevant. If you already have the objects, whether to
>follow the origin link does not matter at all.

>I argue that the following the origin link by one step is harmful as it
>violated the internal Git object model and does not have real benefits.
>If you want to have the origin links, do not follow them at all - the
>commit objects themselves are not useful. (Or, optionally, follow them
>fully - that of course can make sense.)

The origin links are rarely followed, not even by one step.  They are
only followed if a certain operation requires them (not a lot do).

>> > And why are the notes created by git cherry-pick -x insufficient for that?

>> For example, these notes (or the ones created by "git revert") are
>> *wrong* because they talk about commits instead of changesets (deltas
>> between two commits).

>(BTW, I don't feel strongly enough about the header-freeform distinction
>to argue about it and some of your and others' points are good. But even
>if we have the origin links, I think we should only follow them not at
>all or fully.)

Maybe we have a misunderstanding about what "follow a link" means and
when it is done.
During most normal git operation, the origin links are just read, but
not followed.
The only commands that I expect to follow them are log --graph, gitk, fsck
and blame.  I may have missed some corner use-cases, but this should
cover most of it; i.e. most of git ignores them or just makes note of
the hashvalues provided.
-- 
Sincerely,
           Stephen R. van den Berg.

"Am I paying for this abuse or is it extra?"