Re: squashing patches

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

Stephan Beyer <s-beyer@gmx.net> writes:

>> > Comments? Opinions? Ideas?
>> 
>> I actually expected that the primitive command sequence the backward
>> compatible "edit" would expand to would be a pair, "pick" followed by
>> "pause".
>
> Something "like" this was my veeeery first approach: "edit" with commit
> was the backwards-compatible "edit" and without arguments was your
> "pause".
> Example:
> 	pick ea7beef
> 	edit		# or "pause" as you suggested
> After a little discussion this became:
> 	pick --edit ea7beef
>
> And I can't objectively say what's better

Me neither.  My "expectation" came primarily from what I understood,
namely you seemt to prefer atomism, and not from "I want things to be this
way".

If we think any proposed and future instruction would be reasonable to
have --edit option, then all insn implementation would need to support
"edit" option anyway, and the users do not have to remember which insn
does and does not support --edit so both forms would work equally well
(and "--edit option" would make the insn stream shorter, which may be
good).  But probably "mark --edit" and "reset --edit" would not make
sense, so a separate "edit" insn may be more generic and useful.

> The open question is, if we should do this by a natural number <n> or
> by a commit.
> The natural number approach seems easier, but imagine someone pauses
> and does some commits (not --amend)... Here the behavior of these
> approaches differs. ;-)

I see.  Not using count but setting an explicit mark and using that commit
sounds more robust, considering that use case.

>> About the other parts in your original message:
>> 
>>  - The "tag" command looked a little out of place;
>
> Eh, why?

Why not?

I just wondered why there was a support only for lightweight tag there.
You do not have "branch" command, and your "tag" command does not seem to
support things like -a, -s, -m<msg>, etc.  Not that I think you should
support full "tag" and "branch" command set, but it seemed a bit odd.