Re: [PATCH 1/4] rebase -i: add ack action

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

Hi Michael,

On Sun, 10 Apr 2016, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:

> This implements a new ack! action for git rebase -i
> It is essentially a middle ground between fixup! and squash!:
> - commits are squashed silently without editor being started
> - commit logs are concatenated (with action line being discarded)
> - because of the above, empty commits aren't discarded,
>   their log is also included.
> 
> I am using it as follows:
> 	git am -s < mailbox #creates first commit
> 	hack ...
> 	get mail with Ack
> 	git commit --allow-empty -m `cat <<-EOF
> 	ack! first
> 
> 	Acked-by: maintainer
> 	EOF`
> 	repeat cycle
> 	git rebase --autosquash -i origin/master
> 	before public branch push
> 
> The "cat" command above is actually a script that
> parses the Ack mail to create the empty commit -
> to be submitted separately.

This looks awfully complicated, still, and not very generic.

How about making it easier to use, and much, much more generic, like this?

1. introducing an `--add-footer` flag to `git commit` that you could use
like this:

	git commit --amend --add-footer "Acked-by: Bugs Bunny"

2. introducing an `--exec-after` flag to `git commit` that would be a new
sibling of `--fixup` and `--squash` and would work like this:

	git commit --exec-after HEAD~5 \
		'git commit --amend --add-footer "Acked-by: Bugs Bunny"'

(it should imply `--allow-empty`, of course, and probably even fail if
anything was staged for commit at that point.) The commit message would
then look something like

	exec-after! Fix broken breakage

	git commit --amend --add-footer "Acked-by: Bugs Bunny"

This way would obviously benefit a lot more users. For example, you could
easily say (and alias)

	git commit --amend --add-footer 'Reviewed-by: Arrested Developer"

i.e. support all kind of use cases where developers need to slap on
footers in a quick & easy way.

And the --exec-after option would obviously have *a lot* more use cases
than just squashing in ACKs.

Ciao,
Johannes