Re: [PATCH] disable grafts during fetch/push/bundle

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2014 at 11:18:17AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > On Wed, Mar 05, 2014 at 10:49:24AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> >
> >> ... the plan, at least in my mind, has always been exactly that: grafts
> >> were a nice little attempt but is broken---if you really wanted to
> >> muck with the history without rewriting (which is still discouraged,
> >> by the way), do not use "graft", but use "replace".
> >
> > I certainly had in the back of my mind that grafts were a lesser form of
> > "replace", and that eventually we could get rid of the former. Perhaps
> > my question should have been: "why haven't we deprecated grafts yet?".
> 
> Given that we discourage "grafts" strongly and "replace" less so
> (but still discourage it), telling the users that biting the bullet
> and rewriting the history is _the_ permanent solution, I think it is
> understandable why nobody has bothered to.

Perhaps the patch below would help discourage grafts more?

The notable place in the documentation where grafts are still used is
git-filter-branch.txt.  But since the example there is about cementing
rewritten history, it might be OK to leave.

I used "outdated" below. We could also up the ante to "deprecated".

-- >8 --
Subject: [PATCH] docs: mark info/grafts as outdated

We should be encouraging people to use git-replace instead.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 Documentation/gitrepository-layout.txt | 4 ++++
 Documentation/glossary-content.txt     | 4 ++++
 2 files changed, 8 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/gitrepository-layout.txt b/Documentation/gitrepository-layout.txt
index aa03882..17d2ea6 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitrepository-layout.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitrepository-layout.txt
@@ -176,6 +176,10 @@ info/grafts::
 	per line describes a commit and its fake parents by
 	listing their 40-byte hexadecimal object names separated
 	by a space and terminated by a newline.
++
+Note that the grafts mechanism is outdated and can lead to problems
+transferring objects between repositories; see linkgit:git-replace[1]
+for a more flexible and robust system to do the same thing.
 
 info/exclude::
 	This file, by convention among Porcelains, stores the
diff --git a/Documentation/glossary-content.txt b/Documentation/glossary-content.txt
index 378306f..be0858c 100644
--- a/Documentation/glossary-content.txt
+++ b/Documentation/glossary-content.txt
@@ -176,6 +176,10 @@ current branch integrates with) obviously do not work, as there is no
 	you can make Git pretend the set of <<def_parent,parents>> a <<def_commit,commit>> has
 	is different from what was recorded when the commit was
 	created. Configured via the `.git/info/grafts` file.
++
+Note that the grafts mechanism is outdated and can lead to problems
+transferring objects between repositories; see linkgit:git-replace[1]
+for a more flexible and robust system to do the same thing.
 
 [[def_hash]]hash::
 	In Git's context, synonym for <<def_object_name,object name>>.
-- 
1.8.5.2.500.g8060133