Re: [boost] [git] develop and master are two completely distinct branches

Subject: Re: [boost] [git] develop and master are two completely distinct branches
From: Dave Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-12-07 15:33:06

Thomas Heller <thom.heller_at_[hidden]> writes:

> Am 06.12.2013 17:04 schrieb "Steven Watanabe" <watanabesj_at_[hidden]>:
>>
>> AMDG
>>
>> On 12/06/2013 08:06 AM, Thomas Heller wrote:
>> > I just cloned modular boost and wanted to get phoenix back on track.
>> > However, something very disturbing occured to me:
>> > The develop and master branches in the git repos (for all repos) are
>> > completely distinct from each other! How could this happen?
>> > In the case of phoenix those have, unfortunately, completely diverged
>> > from each other (content wise, commit wise, they have completely
>> > distinct commits).
>> > What's the best practice to do here? How to proceed?
>> >
>>
>> In svn the branches are completely separate,
>> and svn:mergeinfo indicates which commits have
>> been merged from other branches.
>
> I was hoping that the conversion script tracked and conserved this
> information. In the current state is close to impossible to see where those
> two branches might have diverged. Also, the history of the master branch of
> most repositories is close to useless now.

It could conserve it, but it couldn't represent it as merge history in
Git.  Git doesn't have a notion of "these commits were merged from that
other branch," except in the same sense that it has a notion of files
being moved or renamed: it can reconstruct that information after the
fact.

Unfortunately, it doesn't use that information for "git merge," AFAIK.
I'm not sure why.

There are several things you can do about this.  One is to use the "git
cherry" command to find commits that are not in common, but there's a
more automatic way to get there, involving a rebase and a few other
steps.  Let me try an experiment with Phoenix and I'll post back here.

-Dave