Re: [PATCH] Let format-patch and rebase ignore trivial merges.

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Johannes Sixt <j.sixt@viscovery.net> writes:

> Please do not set Mail-Followup-To (and use reply-to-all to keep the Cc list).
>
> Bernhard R. Link schrieb:
>> --prune-tree makes rev-list without paths equivalent to
>> "git rev-list $options -- ." (or .. or ../.. and so on,
>> if you are in some subdirectory).
>> This is the new default for format-patch and rebase
>
> Why do you need a new option when you can just add "-- ." to the rev-list
> invocation?

I agree that --[no-]prune-tree options are unnecessary.  The patch to
builtin-log.c, the second hunk to revision.c, and revision.h would be
sufficient and all others should be dropped.  Instead, the shell script
Porcelains can simply add "-- ." at the end of their rev-list invocations.

That way, we don't have to add anything to the documentation either.

But I wonder if it is an indication of something screwy in the workflow,
if a branch that merges others with "-s ours" is where the patches for
upstream submission is taken from with format-patch, or what is rebased
and internally gets its patches extracted with format-patch.

A branch that merges with "-s ours" is typically done so that others can
pull and build against (and "-s ours" is used to cauterize the history of
a bad side branch), and good bits merged into it would also have come from
a different clean branch that is merged into that branch.  It might make
more sense to format-patch that clean branch when preparing for upstream
submission, than the "aggregated mesh of commits" branch with "-s ours"
fix-ups.

On the other hand, a branch that will be rebased to keep up with others is
by definition private, and I don't see a reason to mark with "-s ours" to
cauterize history of an unrelated side branch that tried to do something
similar to what the branch is trying to achieve in that setting.  You can
instead ignore such a side branch and not merge with it.  So I don't know
how a sane history you are going to rebase ends up containing a "-s ours"
merge to begin with.