Subject: Re: [RFC] origin link for cherry-pick and revert

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:59:00 -0700

"Stephen R. van den Berg" <[email-masked]> writes:

> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>As for "by the way ... was used to make this commit": this is git.  So how
>>you arrived at the tree state you record in a commit *does not matter*.
>
> The typical use case for the origin links is in a project with several
> long-lived branches which use cherry-picks to backport amongst them.
> There is no real other way to solve this case, except for some rather
> kludgy stuff in the free-form commit message which doesn't mesh well
> with rebase/filter-branch/stgit etc.
>
> As to "does not matter": then why does git store parent links?

The parent links describe *where* you came from, not *how*.

And if you think the difference is just "semantics", then you haven't
grokked the first lesson I gave in this thread.  "parents" record the
reference points against which you make "this resulting commit suits the
purpose of my branch better than any histories leading to these commits".