Re: [RFC] origin link for cherry-pick and revert

[Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Sep 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >
> > Sure. I don't use them either. But because I don't use them, it doesn't 
> > affect me. It also doesn't change the core git data structures in any way 
> > to introduce any new problems.
> 
> Btw, so far nobody has even _explained_ what the advantage of the origin 
> link is. It apparently has no effect for most things, and for other things 
> it has some (unspecified) effect when it can be resolved.
> 
> Apart from the "dotted line" in graphical history viewers, I haven't 
> actually heard any single concrete example of exactly what it would *do*.
> 
> And that dotted line really does sound like something you could do with 
> just the existing "hyperlink" functionality in the commit message.

As far as I understand (note: I'm neither for, nor against the proposal;
although I think it has thin chance to be accepted, especially soon),
it is for graphical history viewers, for git-cherry to make it more
precise (to detect duplicated/cherry-picked changes better), and in
the future possibly to help history-aware merge strategies. And probably
help patch management interfaces.

On the theoretical front it looks like extension/generalization of
a parent link, marking given commit do be derivative not only some
set of trees, or some line of history, but also on some changeset.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland