Re: [boost] git reset and force push

Subject: Re: [boost] git reset and force push
From: Agustín K-ballo Bergé (kaballo86_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-10-07 17:27:40

On 10/7/2015 5:44 PM, Raffi Enficiaud wrote:
> Le 07/10/15 17:44, Agustín K-ballo Bergé a écrit :
>> On 10/7/2015 12:26 PM, Raffi Enficiaud wrote:
>>
>> Test runners are not necessarily prepared to deal with history rewrites,
>> since those are a frowned upon practice in "public" branches (I'm
>> surprised it's even being considered here).
>
> That is also a surprise: why so? the runner API is running the run.py
> script that is cloning/pulling things: it does not check out any branch,
> so it does not care if develop changed by history rewrite.

You seem to be assuming that external test runners run the Boost 
regression test suite, that's not necessarily the case. It's not 
uncommon for libraries or applications that rely on Boost to proactively 
build against what will be the next version to catch errors ahead of time.

> I am very curious to see what type of errors, and what are the exact
> causes, we had at that time: do you have an idea? because to me - see
> below - this should not be a problem for a bot. Maybe you can point me
> to the corresponding thread (if you have time)?

Others have addressed this already, and there's plenty of material on 
the webs too.

I've only felt the need to jump into this thread when positions started 
to be counted, up until then I did not think it was even worth the time 
discussing it. The case presented is just but one example of how 
rewriting history can be disruptive; as a person who frequently uses 
Boost from git, my position would stay the same even if every bot in 
existence would be modified to tolerate history rewrites.

>> which forces (pun intended) someone
>> to look at it, notice that someone misbehaved, decide on a fix, pester
>> the sysadmin for weeks until the fix is applied, etc.
>
> There is no such as thing like "misbehaviour". The topic of this thread
> is to discuss about policies of boost wrt. to operations /permitted/ by
> git rewriting the history.

That's of course subjective, the operation exists and the tools allow 
you to use it. My opinion is that using it on a public branch is 
misbehaving.

Regards,
-- 
Agustín K-ballo Bergé.-
http://talesofcpp.fusionfenix.com