From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on dcvr.yhbt.net X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-ASN: AS31976 209.132.176.0/21 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.5 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,MSGID_FROM_MTA_HEADER,RP_MATCHES_RCVD shortcircuit=no autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 From: Eran Tromer Subject: Re: If merging that is really fast forwarding creates new commit [Was: Re: how to show log for only one branch] Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2006 13:46:34 +0200 Message-ID: <4550721A.9030504@tromer.org> References: <454EAEDB.8020909@gmail.com> <7vk629f6is.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> <454F31D7.1030202@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 11:47:48 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Junio C Hamano , git@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git@gmane.org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060913 Fedora/1.5.0.7-1.fc5 Thunderbird/1.5.0.7 Mnenhy/0.7.4.0 In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1GhPQb-0005sm-Uf for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Tue, 07 Nov 2006 12:47:42 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932142AbWKGLrh (ORCPT ); Tue, 7 Nov 2006 06:47:37 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932157AbWKGLrh (ORCPT ); Tue, 7 Nov 2006 06:47:37 -0500 Received: from line108-16.adsl.actcom.co.il ([192.117.108.16]:16081 "EHLO lucian.tromer.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932142AbWKGLrg (ORCPT ); Tue, 7 Nov 2006 06:47:36 -0500 Received: from [192.168.4.6] ([192.168.4.6]) by lucian.tromer.org (8.13.7/8.12.11) with ESMTP id kA7Bl7WS006650; Tue, 7 Nov 2006 13:47:09 +0200 To: Linus Torvalds Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Hi Linus, On 2006-11-06 19:48, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > On Mon, 6 Nov 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote: >> Besides, doing an empty commit like that ("I fast forwarded") literally >> doesn't add any true history information. It literally views history not >> as history of the _project_, but as the history of just one of the >> repositories. And that's wrong. > > Btw, absolutely the _only_ reason people seem to want to do this is > because they want to "pee in the snow" and put their mark on things. They > seem to want to show "_I_ did this", even if the "doing" was a total > no-op and they didn't actually generate any real value. In a project that uses topic branches extensively, the merge-induced commits give a useful cue about the logical grouping of patches. They let you easily glean the coarse-grained history and independent lines of work ("pickaxe made it to next", "Linus got the libata updates") without getting bogged down by individual commits, just by looking at the gitk graph. Fast-forwards lose this information, and the more you encourage them, the less grokkable history becomes. Empty commits may be the wrong tool to address this (for all the reasons you gave), but there's certainly useful process information that's currently being lost.