Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] git-rebase: Teach rebase "-" shorthand.

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 12:41:31 -0700

John Keeping <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 12:02:01PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> John Keeping <[email-masked]> writes:
>> 
>> > On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:53:01AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> >>    "rebase -" with your change still says something like this:
>> >> 
>> >>         First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...
>> >>         Fast-forwarded HEAD to @{-1}.
>> >> 
>> >>    instead of "Fast-forwarded HEAD to -".  Somebody may later want
>> >>    to "fix" this, making these two eye-candy output to be different
>> >>    from each other, and what your test expects will no longer hold
>> >>    (not that I think it is better to say "-" instead of @{-1}
>> >>    there).
>> >
>> > I don't think either of these is correct.  When using "-" with the
>> > commands that already support it, I have occasionally found that "-"
>> > isn't what I thought it was.
>> >
>> > Can we use `git name-rev` to put the actual name here, so that people
>> > who have not done what they intended can hopefully notice sooner?
>> 
>> That sounds like a right thing to do.  It however is totally
>> orthogonal to the change we are discussing, and should be done as a
>> separate patch.
>
> Is it not part of adding support for "-"?

I thought your suggestion was:

    'rebase @{-1}' says 'Fast-fowarded HEAD to @{-1}'. It should say
    'Fast-forwarded HEAD to 4f407407 (rebase: allow "-" short-hand
    for the previous branch, 2014-03-19)' instead.

Or it could be:

    'rebase @{-1}' says 'Fast-fowarded HEAD to @{-1}'. It should say
    'Fast-forwarded HEAD to master' instead.

In either case, it does not look like such a change is about
teaching "-" as a synonym to "@{-1}".