Re: Announce: Linux-next (Or Andrew's dream :-))

[James Bottomley]

On Tue, 2008-02-12 at 18:35 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 12 Feb 2008, James Bottomley wrote:
> > 
> > Yes, this is exactly the feature I'm looking for.  It would allow the
> > downstream users of a rebased tree to rebase themselves correctly.
> > 
> > All the information about the rebase is in the reflog ... it can't be
> > too difficult to pass it through on a pull and allow the downstream tree
> > to do the right thing.
> 
> Guys, you simply have no idea what you're talking about.
> 
> Those downstream trees can have done things themselves. They *depended* on 
> the state you gave them.
> 
> You can't just say "oops, I lied, this is the state you should have used, 
> now it's _your_ mess to sort out".
> 
> OF COURSE it's what you'd like to use - it absolves you of any and all 
> actual responsibility. But dammit, that's not what anybody else wants than 
> the irresponsible person who cannot be bothered to stand up for his work!
> 
> If you're not confident enough about your work, don't push it out! It's 
> that simple. Pushing out to a public branch is a small "release".
> 
> Have the f*cking back-bone to be able to stand behind what you did!

Erm, I would like this feature as a downstream user.

I'm not asking for this to be the default or even easily available.
However, when you know you've based a downstream tree on what you know
to be a volatile base, it would be very useful information to have.

Right at the moment, I maintain a <branch> and a <branch>-base and
simply cherry pick the commits between the two to do the right thing
when I know my volatile base has changed.  It would be very helpful to
have a version of rebase that new my base had been rebased.

Basing on a tree I know to be volatile is sometimes a development
decision I make as a downstream user ... I'm just wishing the tools
could help me handle the problems better.

James


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