Will re-basing support be added into Bazaar core ?

[James Westby]

On Tue, 2009-04-21 at 16:29 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>  > Rebase does not preserve existing history.
> 
> In git, it does, by construction.  What it doesn't preserve is the
> value of the ref.

I think this is one of the crucial difference in viewpoint in this
thread.

While what you right is absolutely correct, I think most heavy Bazaar
users would say that value of the ref is what is crucial, so your
point here does not make much sense.

You have talked some about the reflog, which we don't have a related
concept for in Bazaar (yet [1]). Am I correct in saying that the
reflog is local to your repository (it certainly isn't included in
format-patch output, but I'm not sure if "pull" transfers it)? If so
then it's locality seems to limit its use. Yes, the original revisions
are still in your repository, but I can't see them, and you won't be
able to one day. This means the original revisions will be lost 
eventually.

Therefore, what uses are there in being able to easily reference the
old revisions in the time when they are visible in the reflog, beyond
undoing mistakes or diffing the "rewritten" revisions (as these are
the obvious ones).

Your point above is entirely correct, but if it wasn't then git would
be useless as a DVCS, so I think you need to explain what benefit there
is in this. Otherwise it seems repeatedly arguing on this point is
merely trying to pick fault with a slightly sloppy use of terminology,
when if there is not benefit that sloppy use isn't really misplaced.

Thanks,

James


[1] I plan to present a plan for something that will provide some of the
same facilities post 2.0, but it will look somewhat different, and will
hopefully be more usable.