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Quickly rewrite Git repository history

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Re: Quickly rewrite Git repository history

#6

Post by arnorhs »

ifh-hn wrote: post #5

I'm not a git user (it's true, I'm not a professional dev and use fossil for my pet projects) so honest question: why would you want to rewrite your history?

Personality have needed for the following reasons (when wanting to preserve history): removing personal info, removing sensitive keys/passwords that were accidently committed a long time ago, splitting a repo. There's lots of use cases

Re: Quickly rewrite Git repository history

#7

Post by btreecat »

arnorhs wrote: post #6
ifh-hn wrote: post #5

I'm not a git user (it's true, I'm not a professional dev and use fossil for my pet projects) so honest question: why would you want to rewrite your history?

Personality have needed for the following reasons (when wanting to preserve history): removing personal info, removing sensitive keys/passwords that were accidently committed a long time ago, splitting a repo. There's lots of use cases

I support anti-dox/and security practices by cleaning up repo history and rotating where you can, as long as your safe with the assumption that anyone with a copy of the history could push it back to central at any point.

But I really don't like the trend of some folks "need a clean history" and then disabled merge commits.

It's like they are saying "cool snap shot system you got there, id hate for it to be use to take a bunch of incremental snap shots with specific notes attached to each one. Why don't you let me bundle those all together real purdy like and no one has to know it took you 20 commits to fix that decade old bug."

I have literally never heard a reasonable claim that needing a "clean main branch" is more useful in a retro or bisect.

Maybe other folks know of a concrete example?

Re: Quickly rewrite Git repository history

#8

Post by thfuran »

btreecat wrote: post #7
arnorhs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personality have needed for the following reasons (when wanting to preserve history): removing personal info, removing sensitive keys/passwords that were accidently committed a long time ago, splitting a repo. There's lots of use cases

I support anti-dox/and security practices by cleaning up repo history and rotating where you can, as long as your safe with the assumption that anyone with a copy of the history could push it back to central at any point. But I really don't like the trend of some folks "need a clean history" and then disabled merge commits. It's like they are saying "cool snap shot system you got there, id hate for it to be use to ta…

>"cool snap shot system you got there, id hate for it to be use to take a bunch of incremental snap shots with specific notes attached to each one. Why don't you let me bundle those all together real purdy like and no one has to know it took you 20 commits to fix that decade old bug."

It’s more like saying “in any writing process, revising is going to lead to better finished output.” It is absolutely true that no one needs to know that it took you 20 commits to fix that bug. It’s much easier to review 3 commits, one of which contains the refactoring done as part of the fix with the other two each containing changes that address distinct pieces of the bug. The structure of the change is clearer, and the structure of the attached notes will be clearer as well.

Re: Quickly rewrite Git repository history

#9

Post by btreecat »

thfuran wrote: post #8
btreecat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support anti-dox/and security practices by cleaning up repo history and rotating where you can, as long as your safe with the assumption that anyone with a copy of the history could push it back to central at any point. But I really don't like the trend of some folks "need a clean history" and then disabled merge commits. It's like they are saying "cool snap shot system you got there, id hate for it to be use to ta…

>"cool snap shot system you got there, id hate for it to be use to take a bunch of incremental snap shots with specific notes attached to each one. Why don't you let me bundle those all together real purdy like and no one has to know it took you 20 commits to fix that decade old bug." It’s more like saying “in any writing process, revising is going to lead to better finished output.” It is absolutely true that no one…

I don't think all writing process produces the same kinda of output, the editing of code itself is metadata I find more valuable and an artificially straight line.
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