[Python-Dev] Hg: inter-branch workflow

[Barry Warsaw]

On Mar 20, 2011, at 04:39 PM, Georg Brandl wrote:

>On 20.03.2011 16:21, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> What is "rebase"? Why does everyone want it and hate it at the same time?
>
>Basically, rebase is a way to avoid having pointless merge commits on the
>same branch.

There's something I don't understand about rebase.  It seems like most git and
hg users I hear from advocate rebase, while (ISTM) few Bazaar users do.

I'd like to understand whether that's a cultural thing or whether it's a
byproduct of some aspect of the respective tools.

It could be cultural in that communities using git and hg don't want those
local commits to ever show up in their shared repository, even though they are
mostly harmless.  In this graph:

>          A --- B ------------.
>         /                     \
>... --- X --- C --- D --- E --- M

A and B do exist, but I shouldn't care or notice them unless I explicitly
drill down.  The mainline still goes from X to C to D to E to M, and looking
at the differences between E and M should tell me all I need to know.
I.e. specifically, I can ignore A and B for most purposes.

It could be that some aspect of the tools causes A and B to not be hidden as
well as they should, so that when looking at the history for example, the fact
that A and B exist is a jarring or annoying artifact that would be better if
they didn't exist.

I'm asking because I don't know hg and git well enough to answer the
question.  In my own use of Bazaar over the last 4+ years, I've almost never
rebased or even been asked to.  Not that some Bazaar users don't use rebase,
but I just don't think it's that common (John can correct me if I'm wrong).

I'm not trolling, I really want to understand.

-Barry
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