[IPython-dev] Pull request workflow...

[Brian Granger]

On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 11:29 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yo,
>
>> I'm bouncing back this reply to the list, because this is a good
>> question that deserves clarification.  I'm hoping in the end, this
>> conversation will be summarized in our guidelines, so I'd rather have
>> it all publicly archived.
>
> So just to check.  Let's say you have:
>
>        A---B---C topic
>        /
>   D---E---F---G master
>
> You (Fernando) would prefer the pull request to be from a rebased
> version of 'topic':
>
>                         Adash---Bdash---Cdash topic-rebased
>                        /
>   D---E---F---G master
>
> I must say, if it were me, I'd prefer the original in that case,
> because it's a clearer indication of the history, and because rebasing
> does have some cost.

I agree with this.

> The cost is that rebasing orphans the original 'topic' branch so that
> it becomes actively dangerous to have around.   If you try and merge
> 'topic' after you've merged 'rebased-topic' you'll get lots of
> conflicts that will be confusing.   That means that, if you've put
> 'topic' up on your github site, and anyone's fetched from you, then
> you've got to track who fetched and warn them they are going to run
> into trouble if they use anything based on it.

Yes, rebasing definitely creates a lot of overhead in the form of
extra branches that you have to manage. For new devs (even for me
sometimes) that is a significant cost.

> Well - anyway - you know all that - but I think - if you are
> suggesting rebasing even for the clean 'coffee cup handle' type of
> branches, that would be unusual practice no?

I know some projects like to rebase absolutely everything to have a
perfectly clean DAG. I don't feel like way and think the non-rebased
merges of coffee cup handle branches is just fine.

> On the other hand, I agree with you and Linus (!) that it's very
> confusing if someone's merged the main branch into their own before a
> pull request and that would be a good thing to discourage in general.

Yep.

Cheers,

Brian

> Sorry - maybe the fever's got to me ;)
>
> Mattthew
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-- 
Brian E. Granger, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Physics
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
bgranger at calpoly.edu
ellisonbg at gmail.com