Re: Rebasing with merges and conflict resolutions

["R. Tyler Ballance" <tyler@monkeypox.org>]

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On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, Johannes Sixt wrote:

> Please don't set Mail-Followup-To on this list.
> 
> Am 3/26/2010 4:11, schrieb R. Tyler Ballance:
> > Two contributors worked in tandem on a particular project, constantly merging
> > back and forth between each other creating a history of 118 commits total with
> > 37 of them being merge commits, 7 of those merge commits having conflict
> > resolutions involved.
> > 
> > I would /like/ to rebase those into a more linear revision history, but I
> > can't seem to find any set of commands that doesn't have me:
> >    a) Manually re-doing every conflict resolution and merge (git rebase -p master)
> >    b) Drastically diverging from the original topic branch and entering some
> >       sort of mergeless hell (git rebase master)
> 
> I'm afraid you can't avoid the merge conflict resolutions. But you can let
> you help by git-rerere. Look into the script rerere-train.sh that lets you
> prime your rerere database.
> 
> http://repo.or.cz/w/alt-git.git/blob_plain/master:/contrib/rerere-train.sh
> 
> > Is it even possible to straighten this out without a massive rework of these
> > commits?
> 
> I would sort the commits into topics and then repeatedly rebase -i the
> history involved onto the same commit, each time removing those commits
> that do not belong to the topic. That is, you get a forest of topics
> sprouting from the same commit. Finally, merge the topics back together.

The problem I'm having with this is that with a `git rebase -p -i master` I
can't even squash two related changes that are right next to each other
together because the rebase bails out earlier on conflicts while trying to
replay.

Perhaps I'm chosing the incorrect upstream?

> IOW, I wouldn't aim at a completely linear history, at least not at the
> first try.
> 
> > In the future, is there a better way for two developers to work in the same
> > back-and-forth fashion (code ping pong!) without leading to *heavily* merged
> > histories that are unpossible to untangle?
> 
> Discipline. Keep developers focused on their topic. Merge only after a
> topic is completed. Do not give in to "oh, *your* feature is cool, *I*
> want to have it now, so I merge it".

I think that's easier said than done, with backend work I'm able to clearly
define topics, whereas the front-end developers (as it is in this case)
typically overlap ever so slightly in their work

Cheers,
-R. Tyler Ballance
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