Re: [PATCH v2 04/13] Teach rebase interactive the mark command

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

Hi,

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> The problem is that both of you stopped reading after the part you 
> quoted.

I did not.  But I assumed that Hannes' example showed that it is always 
possible to reorder the commands such that you there is no problem with 
interpreting a short commit name as the original commit _until_ that 
commit is rewritten, and _then_ as the rewritten commit.

It is a simple matter of the word "acyclic" in the term "DAG".  It means 
that whenever you need to refer to a commit, it either comes before or 
after the commit you need it for, not both directions.

And I tried to make clear that I thought deeply about the issue by 
mentioning that you can always use "edit" to stop somewhere and mark (even 
by a lightweight tag), should you need to split a commit such that you 
need to reference both the original and the rewritten commit.

I think the balance to cut here is that of usability.  You can cater for 
the obscure cases, but that just does not make sense.  With some recipe -- 
as illustrated by Hannes -- it is very easy to see what it does, and as 
easy to modify it, should that be necessary.

The alternative is obviously easier for the cases that next to nobody will 
need.

So no, your argument does not convince me, and I still think that I 
understood it correctly from the start.

Ciao,
Dscho