Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/2] replay: add --update-refs option

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2025 09:44:06 -0700

Elijah Newren <[email-masked]> writes:

>> > Seems fair...but why not make --update-refs the default and add an
>> > option for those that just want the update commands?
>>
>> If this patch series had been sent a few months after `git replay` was
>> introduced, I would have been fine with this series making `git
>> replay` update the refs by default while adding an option that only
>> outputs the commands. Unfortunately `git replay` seems to have been
>> introduced in v2.44.0 (Feb 22, 2024), so more than 18 months ago. So
>> even if it is marked as experimental, it's perhaps a bit late to make
>> such a relatively big change in it?
>
> I don't think so; we marked it as experimental much more prominently
> than other commands -- in the .c file, and three separate places in
> the documentation.

When we are talking about a change that breaks an established
end-user expectation, it does not matter much if we wrote anything
in the .c source files.  The end-user facing documentation does.

And as you said, "git replay -h" and "git replay --help" prominently
show that the experimental nature of the command.

If this new behaviour is a clear improvement for majority of use
cases, I am perfectly fine with changing the default behaviour so
that everybody will benefit.  It may still be good to add an option
to allow the users to ask for the traditional "we'll give you a list
of updates you can apply as you see fit, but would not update the
refs ourselves" mode, though.