Subject: Re: [RFC/PATCH v2] create a skeleton for the command git rebase --status

From: Matthieu Moy <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 17:53:46 +0200

Guillaume Pages <[email-masked]> writes:

> Hi, 
>
> "Paul Tan" <[email-masked]> : 
>> I haven't kept up with the discussion, but I'm wondering: since you 
>> need the functionality in wt-status.c, why not implement it in git 
>> status? In fact, git-status already shows if there is a rebase in 
>> progress, so why not extend it to say which patch/todo line the rebase 
>> stopped on? It feels much more natural to me to use git-status to 
>> check the status of the rebase, instead of git rebase --status. 
>> Thanks, Paul 
>
> It's a question I have asked myself but since git rebase --status will 
> certainly display more information 

Historically, I had the idea of "git rebase --status" and Ensimag
students started working on it 2 years ago. The same question came back
then during the discussion: why not just in status? This lead to the
header in the output of "git status" ("You are currently ...", for
rebase/am/bisect/...).

But I think there are more relevant information to show (e.g. list of
already applied commits, remaining list of commits, possibly truncated
if the list is overly long, and information that rebase gave you when
stopping like the path to the file being applied). Having them all in
"git status" would make the output really long, for little benefit in
day-to-day use.

So, to me, it makes sense to have a separate command "tell me everything
you know about the current state of the rebase".

> If we choose to use git status, it could be an option to display the
> full information since it currently gives very few information. I'm
> not sure what -verbose does but it could be its role.

"git status --verbose" is already taken for "show me the diff together
with status".

(I'm also dreaming of a "git status --tutor" that would show detailed
explanations with pointers to the documentation & all for each section
of "status". Useless for non-beginners, but could be a nice way to teach
Git to beginners)

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/