Subject: Re: why is git destructive by default? (i suggest it not be!)

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:22:12 +0200

David Jeske wrote:

> To re-ask the same question I asked in my last post, using your ascii
> pictures...
> 
> 
> Let's assume we're here..
> 
> .<---.<---.<---A<---X<---Y    <--- master
>  \
>   \--B<---C                   <--- customer_A_branch <=== HEAD
> 
> 
> And this person and everyone else moves their head pointers back
> to master without merging:

You could simply say: they stop working on 'customer_A_branch' branch
(moving HEAD poter is simply switching to / checking out / working on
different branch).
 
> .<---.<---.<---A<---X<---Y    <--- master              <=== HEAD
>  \
>   \--B<---C                   <--- customer_A_branch
> 
> 
> Now, five years down the road, our tree looks like:
> 
> 
> .<---.<---.<---A<---X<---Y<--.(3 years of changes).--ZZZ  <--- master  <=== HEAD
>  \
>   \--B<---C   <--- customer_A_branch
> 
> And someone does:
> 
> git-branch -f customer_A_branch ZZZ

If they are using '-f', i.e. force, they should know and be sure what
they are doing; it is not much different from 'rm -f *'.

If reflog for 'customer_A_branch' expired it would be hard to go back
to old 'customer_A_branch', and impossible after garbage collector
pruned history.

What you _should do_, if you want to preserve old 'customer_A_branch'
pointer is to *tag* it, e.g. something like 'Attic/customer_A_branch';
if you use annotated tags you can even state why do you want to keep
old work, and why old work wasn't merged into long-lived branch, and
why the work was abandoned.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland