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From: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat•com>
To: Peter Baumann <waste.manager@gmx•de>
Cc: git@vger•kernel.org
Subject: Re: Cover grafting in the Git User's Manual
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:20:32 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87bq9drxwf.fsf@pike.pond.sub.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20071128184228.GB4461@xp.machine.xx> (Peter Baumann's message of "Wed\, 28 Nov 2007 19\:42\:28 +0100")

Peter Baumann <waste.manager@gmx•de> writes:

> On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 07:23:01PM +0100, Markus Armbruster wrote:
>> The only mention of grafting in the manual is in the glossary:
>> 
>>     Grafts enables two otherwise different lines of development to
>>     be joined together by recording fake ancestry information for
>>     commits. This way you can make git pretend the set of parents
>>     a commit has is different from what was recorded when the
>>     commit was created. Configured via the .git/info/grafts file.
>> 
>> I believe it would be useful to cover this better, perhaps in chapter
>> 5. Rewriting history and maintaining patch series.  It certainly would
>> have saved me a few hours of digging.  I already understood enough of
>> git to *know* that what I wanted must be possible (supply missing
>> parents of merges in a repository imported with parsecvs), but I
>> didn't know the magic keyword was graft.  I managed to figure it out
>> >from the glossary, git-filter-branch(1) and GitWiki's GraftPoint page.
>> 
>> I'm neither writer nor git expert, but here's my try anyway:
>> 
>> Rewriting ancestry with grafts
>> 
>> Grafts enables two otherwise different lines of development to be
>> joined together by recording fake ancestry information for commits.
>> This way you can make git pretend the set of parents a commit has is
>> different from what was recorded when the commit was created.
>> 
>> Why would you want to do that?  Say, you imported a repository from an
>> SCM that doesn't record merges properly, e.g. CVS.  Grafts let you add
>> the missing parents to the merge commits.  Or you switched your
>> project to git by populating a new repository with current sources,
>> and later decide you want more history.  Committing old versions is
>> easy enough, but you also need to graft a parent to your original root
>> commit.
>> 
>> Graft points are configured via the .git/info/grafts file.  It has one
>> record per line describing a commit and its fake parents by listing
>> object names separated by a space and terminated by a newline.
>> 
>>     <commit sha1> <parent sha1> [<parent sha1>]*
>> 
>> A graft point does not actually change its commit.  Nothing can.  What
>> can be done is rewriting the commit and its descendants.
>> git-filter-branch does that:
>> 
>>     $ cat .git/info/grafts
>>     db5a561750ae87615719ae409d1f50c9dfc3fa71 08f2fa81d104b937c1f24c68f56e9d5039356764 8c231303bb995cbfdfd1c434a59a7c96ea2f0251
>>     git-filter-branch HEAD ^08f2fa81d104b937c1f24c68f56e9d5039356764 ^8c231303bb995cbfdfd1c434a59a7c96ea2f0251
>> 
>> This rewrites history between head and the graft-point to include the
>> grafted parents.
>
> Did I overlook something or isn't
>
>      git-filter-branch HEAD ^db5a561750ae87615719ae409d1f50c9dfc3fa71
>
> what you are looking for? Only db5a56 could get rewritten and obviously
> all the commits having it as a parent.
>
> -Peter

That rewrites all commits reachable from HEAD that are not reachable
from db5a56.  In particular, it doesn't rewrite db5a56, does it?

  reply	other threads:[~2007-11-29 13:21 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2007-11-28 18:23 Cover grafting in the Git User's Manual Markus Armbruster
2007-11-28 18:42 ` Peter Baumann
2007-11-29 13:20   ` Markus Armbruster [this message]
2007-11-29 18:10     ` Peter Baumann

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