looms v. rebase (or, Where are the blogs?!)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ben Finney writes:

 > being that Andrew Cowie claims the Bazaar core developers think rebase
 > is evil -- yet I can never find any of them saying so themselves.

Thank you for the effort.  I didn't realize until about 3 hours ago
that Andrew wasn't a member of the inner circle, or at the very least
close enough to the campfire to feel the warmth.

 > So, if you're responding to claims of "rebase is evil", can you
 > please show where that claim was made and by whom?

The actual word "evil" may not have been used by anyone, but in VC, if
"destruction of history" is not evil, what is it?  Several people,
including at least you and Robert in the dozen posts still in my inbox
have referred to destruction of history as a plausible interpretation
of what rebase does, presumably including git rebase.

I do not think that allowing claims that rebase "destroys" or "alters"
history to stand is good for bzr.  git gets almost all of its speed,
most of its repo compactness, and much of its power from the simple
device of reducing operations to ref manipulations whereever
possible.  I think a similar strategy will pay great dividends for
bzr, but it won't get a chance unless at least some of the core bzr
people accept a conceptual separation between the history of a project
and the name(s) of its branches.