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Subject: Re: [boost] [git] Mercurial?
From: Bronek Kozicki (brok_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-03-20 07:18:22


On 20/03/2012 07:47, Sergiu Dotenco wrote:
> On 3/20/2012 2:41 AM, Bruno Santos wrote:
... [BK cut here]
>> I don't think mercurial is simpler to use. It just makes it harder
>> to edit history, which is only advantageous for someone completely
>> clueless about it.
>
> You think? How about sticking to the facts? Moreover, why would you
> even want to edit already shared history? Seems like there are much
> more clueless Git users who are not able to handle the tool in the
> first place.

"already shared" is implied and unnecessary. If you remove this bit,
editing history in git starts to make perfect sense.

When you want history to be readable and logical to other contributors,
you will likely want to use "git rebase -i" to tidy up or roll up your
*local* commits *before* you share them with others. It is your private
repository and private changes, until you share it.

This enables tight private iteration loop while keeping the noise off
public repository. Eg. you can do commit small change, run test, commit
more changes, run more tests, to eventually find out that the first
change had a fatal bug. Edit first commit, add necessary comment, rinse
and repeat as necessary. When done and tested, roll up your commits and
share with others.

Just an example of style really, the important point is that your
development style will not create unnecessary commits in shared
repository. Well at least this is my experience from using git, and it
seems to work well for my (very distributed) team.

B.


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