Re: [boost] git reset and force push

Subject: Re: [boost] git reset and force push
From: Raffi Enficiaud (raffi.enficiaud_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-10-07 16:21:13

Le 07/10/15 18:49, Stephen Kelly a écrit :
> Raffi Enficiaud wrote:
>
>> Le 07/10/15 17:02, Andrey Semashev a écrit :
>>> On 07.10.2015 16:27, Raffi Enficiaud wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Since the organization of boost.test is biased by the runners, our
>>>> develop branch will become a kind of release branch (like master for
>>>> other less coupled modules). Our internal develop branch (not called
>>>> develop but something else) will accept force pushes, but this is fine
>>>> since it is not meant to be checked out by anyone but boost.test
>>>> developers.
>>>
>>> There's one problem with this approach, if you intend to accept patches
>>> or pull requests. What branch are they supposed to be against? So far
>>> the general rule was to create PRs against develop. Others have
>>> mentioned problems with forks in case when history is rewritten, so
>>> maybe PRs will become unusable.
>>>
>>
>> The patch can be rebased manually before being commited. This is what
>> they do in eg. CMake and it is working quite well.
>
> Speaking as an upstream CMake maintainer, this statement is not true.
> Once a commit is reachable from the master branch it is definitely not
> rebased. The master branch does not get rewritten. Rewriting long-lived
> branches is wrong.

I was specifically mentioning the case of PR and patches, hence not yet 
included in the history: they can be rebased as we want quite easily, 
although manually (a PR can be downloaded as a patch or pulled into a 
branch).

>
> Temporary branches under review can get rebased. That is very different.
> Then the temporary branch gets merged to master and the temporary branch is
> removed.

Correct, in our case, develop is not a temporary branch and has the same 
public value as master. I believe this is the case for "next" in CMake 
as well, which serves a bit as our develop. As soon as there is a merge 
point from the topic to master or next, it is impossible to rewrite the 
history of the topic (rebase +/- interactive).

Best,
Raffi