Subject: Re: rebasing merges

From: Johannes Sixt <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:09:23 +0200

Stephen Haberman schrieb:
> I noticed the t3400.sh test explicitly tests for the flattening
> behavior, but I can't tell if that is because it's testing for
> explicitly desired behavior or if the "linear-izing" is something
> that is up for debate (or a command line/config option).

This is the expected behavior and not up for debate.

Consider this use-case, for example: You keep a private patch or two on
top of upstream, and you also regularly pull from upstream. You get this
history:

  ---o--o--o--o--o--o    <-- origin
      \     \        \
       A--B--M--------N  <-- master

A and B are the private patches. From time to time you want to update them
if they get out of date, which is indicated by merge conflicts in the
merges M and N. Then you want this result:

  ---o--o--o--o--o--o         <-- origin
                     \
                      A'--B'  <-- master

i.e. linearized history without merges.

-- Hannes