Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] rebase: add a --rebase-merges=drop option

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2023 13:42:02 -0800

Alex Henrie <[email-masked]> writes:

> Name the new option "drop" intead of "no" or "false" to avoid confusion

This is traditionally called "flattening the history".  Don't we
confuse uesrs by introducing a new phrase?

rebase-merges is about transplanting the history without flattening,
i.e. keeping the mergy commit graph topology.  If there are only two
kinds of rebase (i.e. keeping the topology which is rebase-merges
and the other "flattening" kind) operation, shouldn't the option be
called "--no-rebase-merges" instead?  --rebase-merges=no is also
understandable.

> in the future if --rebase-merges grows the ability to truly "rebase"
> merge commits by reusing the conflict resolution information from the
> original merge commit, and we want to add an option to ignore the
> conflict resolution information.

I am not sure why such a change "in the future" is not merely a
bugfix of the current "--rebase-merges", though.  Once it is fixed,
is there a reason to make the fixed behaviour only available behind
an option?