Subject: Re: [PATCH] rebase --fix: interactive fixup mode

From: Clemens Buchacher <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2012 23:19:48 +0100

On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 01:57:03PM -0800, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> 
> > In order to determine a suitable range automatically, it is a reasonable
> > heuristic to rebase onto the most recent merge commit.
> 
> Why not additionally / instead take into account remote-tracking
> branches for "push" remotes?

For me personally, remote-tracking does not work. I frequently branch
locally, and even if I do branch from a remote branch, it's often not
from a public branch, but rather my own private branch that I
synchronize between repos and machines. So my remote-tracking
configuration is usually an awful mess, and it does not feel like fixing
it up manually would be worth the trouble.

As a result, I don't trust remote-tracking and I do not use any of the
features associated with it. For my uses of rebase --fix it would
therefore be counter-productive to consider remote-tracking information.

What I did consider was adding a comment to the list of "pick <commit>"
that interactive rebase offers saying:

# older commits are already contained in the current upstream branch

Also, I often rewrite commits that are also contained in other branches.
That typically happens when I am reworking a topic that has already been
tested extensively. In that case I like to keep the original branch
around for reference, even if I end up not using it eventually.