Re: [StGit PATCH] edit: Allow setting git tree SHA1 of a patch

["Gustav Hållberg" <gustav@gmail.com>]

> On 21 May 2010 14:59, David Kågedal <davidk@lysator.liu.se> wrote:
>> The idea is that Gustav wants to allow the editing of a file as it
>> appears in an earlier version. Lets say you have patches A, B, C and
>> D. You realize that one of the changes in to foo.c in C shuold really be
>> done in A. So you open the "A version of foo.c" in your editor, do the
>> change, and then save it. The save operation needs to update A to be
>> the new tree that contains the updated foo.c, and the remaining patches
>> will keep their tree. The effect is that the moved change now appears as
>> a diff in A, but not in C (nor B or D).

David's example does not exactly describe the situation I have in
mind. I was only envisaging the possibility to move a change from one
patch to one of its neighbours. This is enforced by keeping all other
trees intact.

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 5:16 PM, Catalin Marinas
<catalin.marinas@gmail.com> wro> This is currently achieved by "pop B
C D", edit file, "refresh", "push
> --set-tree B C D".
>
> Can "edit --set-tree <sha1>" make this simpler? Which <sha1> value
> would be used with "edit --set-tree" (unless that's done by Emacs mode
> behind the scene and it generates the tree that gets passed to edit).

This is indeed my assumption. Without a "smart" user interface to hide
the intricacies this operation becomes too complicated. At least
unless you work exclusively with the index. My prototype for the Emacs
mode approximately does 'read-tree <old patch sha1>', 'update-index
--cache-info <new blob>', 'stg edit --set-tree $(write-tree)'.

I actually think it is the use of the Emacs user interface that really
enabled us (me and my colleagues) to see the stack as a living set of
changes that are very easy to edit. This lead to the conclusion that
one wants to make it much easier, light-weight and faster to move
individual changes between (for a start, neighbouring) patches.

As you point out, there are a number of ways to do these things
already; this is all about making it very easy.

- Gustav