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From: Siddharth Asthana <siddharthasthana31@gmail•com>
To: phillip.wood@dunelm•org.uk, git@vger•kernel.org
Cc: christian.couder@gmail•com, ps@pks•im, newren@gmail•com,
	gitster@pobox•com, karthik.188@gmail•com, code@khaugsbakk•name,
	rybak.a.v@gmail•com, jltobler@gmail•com, toon@iotcl•com,
	johncai86@gmail•com, johannes.schindelin@gmx•de
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/1] replay: add --revert option to reverse commit changes
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2025 01:09:23 +0530	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <38b51e19-7939-4a5e-8ad0-2d8168bc0fac@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <d563b68b-e01d-4b18-bd84-86f36e61a70d@gmail.com>


On 26/11/25 16:40, Phillip Wood wrote:
> Hi Siddharth
>
> On 25/11/2025 17:00, Siddharth Asthana wrote:
>>
>> diff --git a/Documentation/git-replay.adoc 
>> b/Documentation/git-replay.adoc
>> index dcb26e8a8e..ad7dc08622 100644
>> --- a/Documentation/git-replay.adoc
>> +++ b/Documentation/git-replay.adoc
>> @@ -54,6 +54,18 @@ which uses the target only as a starting point 
>> without updating it.
>> [...]
>> +To revert a range of commits:
>> +
>> +------------
>> +$ git replay --revert --onto main feature~3..feature
>> +------------
>> +
>> +This creates new commits on top of 'main' that reverse the changes 
>> introduced
>> +by the last three commits on 'feature'. The 'feature' branch is 
>> updated to
>> +point at the last of these revert commits. The 'main' branch is not 
>> updated
>> +in this case.


Hi Phillip,

Thanks for the detailed analysis!


>
> I'm struggling to understand when I'd want to do this. Why would I 
> want to update 'feature' to point to the reverted version of its last 
> tree commits rebased onto 'main'?


You are absolutely right - the `--onto` example I provided doesn't make 
practical sense. Elijah's reply clarified the architecture: `--revert` 
should be its own mode, not a modifier that combines with `--onto` or 
`--advance`.


The realistic use case is reverting commits from a branch where those 
commits already exist. For example:

     git replay --revert main~3..main

This would revert the last 3 commits on main, creating revert commits on 
top of main.


>  In order to understand I ran the first tests case which does
>
>     git replay --onto topic1 --revert topic1..topic2
>
> after fixing it by adding --ref-action=print the resulting commit log 
> looks like
>
> commit d337fab78e90008835f74e890039b464a0308cbe
> Author: author@name <bogus@email@address>
> Date:   Thu Apr 7 15:30:13 2005 -0700
>
>     Revert "E
>     "
>
>     This reverts commit bceb3acd81ddd36ba0da391fffa48949a1337276.
>
> commit 47f0cc1c1f1911c0047a4d79d79f7c19c6c7151a
> Author: author@name <bogus@email@address>
> Date:   Thu Apr 7 15:30:13 2005 -0700
>
>     Revert "D
>     "
>
>     This reverts commit d953cf2dcc1da8b51934e43fd83dac72d0e267c7.
>
>
> The commits are empty because the original they are reverting each 
> create a new file which is then present in the base revision but not 
> in either of the merge heads when we revert.


This confirms the tests aren't realistic. In v2, I will create tests 
where the commits being reverted are ancestors of the replay target, so 
the reverts produce meaningful diffs.


>  This suggests to me that it is not a very realistic test and I'm 
> still scratching my head to see where "git replay --onto <commit> 
> --revert" is useful.
>
> If '--revert' does not make sense with '--onto' then perhaps it should 
> be a new mode that takes a ref and acts like '--advance' but reverts 
> the commits rather than cherry-picking them. When reverting a range of 
> commits it would reduce the likelihood of conflicts to revert then in 
> reverse order so we should either recommend passing '--reverse' or 
> make that the default when '--revert' is given.
>
> As you can see in the log output above the new function to format the 
> revert subject lines is buggy.


Good catch! The bug is in `generate_revert_message()` - I am passing 
`orig_message` (which points to the full message including body) to 
`sequencer_format_revert_header()`, but that function expects just the 
subject line.

Looking at how sequencer.c does it, they use `msg.subject` which is 
properly extracted. I need to use `commit_subject_length()` to get just 
the subject:

     int subject_len = find_commit_subject(message, &orig_message);
     char *subject = xmemdupz(orig_message, subject_len);
     generate_revert_message(&msg, subject, &based_on->object.oid);
     free(subject);


> If you had used test_commit_message() to check the commit message, 
> rather than just grepping for ^Revert the tests would have picked that 
> up.


You are right. I will use test_commit_message() for proper validation in v2.

Thanks,
Siddharth


>
> Thanks
>
> Phillip
>

  parent reply	other threads:[~2025-11-26 19:39 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 96+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2025-11-25 17:00 [PATCH 0/1] replay: add --revert option to reverse commit changes Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-25 17:00 ` [PATCH 1/1] " Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-25 19:22   ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-25 19:30     ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-25 19:39       ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-25 20:06         ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-26 19:31           ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-26 19:28         ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-26 19:26     ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-26 21:13       ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-27 19:23         ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-26 11:10   ` Phillip Wood
2025-11-26 17:35     ` Elijah Newren
2025-11-26 18:41       ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-26 21:17         ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-26 23:06           ` Elijah Newren
2025-11-26 23:14             ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-26 23:57               ` Elijah Newren
2025-11-26 19:50       ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-26 19:39     ` Siddharth Asthana [this message]
2025-11-27 16:21       ` Phillip Wood
2025-11-27 19:24         ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-25 17:25 ` [PATCH 0/1] " Johannes Schindelin
2025-11-25 18:02   ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-26 19:18   ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-26 21:04     ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-27 19:21       ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-27 20:17         ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-28  8:07         ` Elijah Newren
2025-11-28  8:24           ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-11-28 16:35             ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-28 17:07               ` Elijah Newren
2025-11-28 20:50                 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-28 22:03                   ` Elijah Newren
2025-11-29  5:59                     ` Junio C Hamano
2025-12-02 20:16 ` [PATCH v2 0/2] replay: add --revert mode " Siddharth Asthana
2025-12-02 20:16   ` [PATCH v2 1/2] sequencer: extract revert message formatting into shared function Siddharth Asthana
2025-12-05 11:33     ` Patrick Steinhardt
2025-12-07 23:00       ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-12-08  7:07         ` Patrick Steinhardt
2026-02-11 13:03           ` Toon Claes
2026-02-11 13:40             ` Patrick Steinhardt
2026-02-11 15:23             ` Kristoffer Haugsbakk
2026-02-11 17:41               ` Junio C Hamano
2026-02-18 22:53             ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-12-02 20:16   ` [PATCH v2 2/2] replay: add --revert mode to reverse commit changes Siddharth Asthana
2025-12-05 11:33     ` Patrick Steinhardt
2025-12-07 23:03       ` Siddharth Asthana
2025-12-16 16:23     ` Phillip Wood
2026-02-18 23:42   ` [PATCH v3 0/2] " Siddharth Asthana
2026-02-18 23:42     ` [PATCH v3 1/2] sequencer: extract revert message formatting into shared function Siddharth Asthana
2026-02-20 17:01       ` Toon Claes
2026-02-25 21:53         ` Junio C Hamano
2026-03-06  4:55           ` Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-06  4:31         ` Siddharth Asthana
2026-02-26 14:27       ` Phillip Wood
2026-03-06  5:00         ` Siddharth Asthana
2026-02-18 23:42     ` [PATCH v3 2/2] replay: add --revert mode to reverse commit changes Siddharth Asthana
2026-02-20 17:35       ` Toon Claes
2026-02-20 20:23         ` Junio C Hamano
2026-02-23  9:13         ` Christian Couder
2026-02-23 11:23           ` Toon Claes
2026-03-06  5:05         ` Siddharth Asthana
2026-02-26 14:45       ` Phillip Wood
2026-03-06  5:28         ` Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-06 15:52           ` Phillip Wood
2026-03-06 16:20             ` Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-13  5:40     ` [PATCH v4 0/2] " Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-13  5:40       ` [PATCH v4 1/2] sequencer: extract revert message formatting into shared function Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-13 15:53         ` Junio C Hamano
2026-03-16 19:12           ` Toon Claes
2026-03-16 16:57         ` Phillip Wood
2026-03-13  5:40       ` [PATCH v4 2/2] replay: add --revert mode to reverse commit changes Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-16 16:57         ` Phillip Wood
2026-03-16 19:52         ` Toon Claes
2026-03-17 10:11           ` Phillip Wood
2026-03-16 16:59       ` [PATCH v4 0/2] " Phillip Wood
2026-03-16 19:53       ` Toon Claes
2026-03-24 22:03       ` [PATCH v5 " Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-24 22:04         ` [PATCH v5 1/2] sequencer: extract revert message formatting into shared function Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-24 22:04         ` [PATCH v5 2/2] replay: add --revert mode to reverse commit changes Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-25  6:29           ` Junio C Hamano
2026-03-25 15:10             ` Toon Claes
2026-03-25 15:38               ` Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-25 16:44               ` Phillip Wood
2026-03-25 15:36             ` Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-25 20:23         ` [PATCH v6 0/2] " Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-25 20:23           ` [PATCH v6 1/2] sequencer: extract revert message formatting into shared function Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-25 20:23           ` [PATCH v6 2/2] replay: add --revert mode to reverse commit changes Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-28  4:33             ` Tian Yuchen
2026-03-29 16:17               ` Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-30 17:23                 ` Tian Yuchen
2026-03-31  8:08                   ` Toon Claes
2026-03-31  8:11                 ` Toon Claes
2026-03-25 20:23           ` [PATCH v6 1/2] sequencer: extract revert message formatting into shared function Siddharth Asthana
2026-03-25 20:23           ` [PATCH v6 2/2] replay: add --revert mode to reverse commit changes Siddharth Asthana

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