Subject: Re: Do most people feel tracking branches useful?

From: Andreas Ericsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:53:27 +0100

Liu Yubao wrote:
> Andreas Ericsson wrote:
>> Liu Yubao wrote:
>>
>> Use "git fetch" instead of "git pull" and you won't need the 'my' branch.
>> If you use "git pull --rebase" you won't need to bother at all.
>>
> Thank you very much, I didn't know the "--rebase" option, now I learn
> the 'branch.<name>.rebase' configuration too by "git help pull".
> 
> [...snip...]
> 
>> I can't understand why you're working so hard for a linear history, but
>> perhaps
>> that's just an effect of only having leaf developers. I also can't
>> understand
> You got it exactly, we are leaf developers and make enhancement mostly,
> we don't want the upstream branch full of merging commit for many
> not so major changes. I remember keeping linear history is recommended
> in git's documentation.
> 

That should probably be rephrased to "Think before you merge" or something
like that. Keeping history linear provides very little value in itself,
but mindlessly criss-cross-merging makes history difficul to review for
no good reason. Any perceived value of mindless merging is quickly
nullified once one starts looking at "git rerere".

The only time you'll run into problems with non-linear history is when
you're bisecting, and bisection ends up at a merge-commit where all the
merged branhces tips' pre-merge work flawlessly, but the merge-commit
itself introduces breakage by erroneously resolving a conflict, or by
introducing changes of its own (git commit --amend, fe).

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   [email-masked]
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231