Subject: Re: [PATCH] revision: --include-diversions adds helpful merges

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2020 08:56:42 -0700

Philip Oakley <[email-masked]> writes:

>> Yes, but "redirect", "switch", "detour", or "divert" do not quite
>> mean "merging in a real change", at least to me.
>>
>>> I'll just submit my v2 as-is, which includes a significant change to
>>> the documentation that should make things more clear.
>> Thanks.
> Can I suggest "--side-merges" as a possible descriptor for these
> non-mainline diversions?
>
> My thesaurus had suggested detour and sidetracked, which led to the
> side-merge view.

Ahh, sorry Derrick for being slow and thanks Philip for repeating
"diversion", as the word did not click for me at all when I saw the
patch and wrote my response.

But I think it started slowly to dawn on me.  

Does it come from the worldview where we want to follow the "trunk"
but because when we notice at a merge that we got everything that
matters to us from a side branch, we switch the track out of the
mainline and from then on follow that side branch?  Switching the
track and following the side branch happens silently with the
default "history simplification", but the new feature shows where
that side-tracking happens more prominently---is that where the
words "divert" etc. come from?

Then I can understand how these candidate words may have place in
describing the situation we want to use the feature; I am not yet
convinced any of the concrete option names floated on the thread (or
what I can come up with right now) would be clear to our target
audiences, but at least I am not as confused as I was before.

Thanks.