Re: git bikeshedding (Re: triggers in dpkg, and dpkg maintenance)

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

On Mon February 25 2008 9:31:15 am Otavio Salvador wrote:
> Right. Well said.
>
> This however doesn't changes the value of logical changes. I doubt
> git.git people would accept patches like:
>
> "Now it compiles again"
> "Ouch! Syntax error"
> "First try to get it done"
> ...
>
> It's much nicer to have something like:
>
> "Implements the basis for feature 'foo'"
> "Changes code to use new feature 'foo'"
>
> and avoid all the messy commits done in the way.

Why?

I would rather have the original history.  After all, isn't that what version 
control is for?  Preserving history?

Because perhaps in my attempt to fix a syntax error I inadvertantly messed up 
some logic that I don't notice until a year later.  Perhaps if I then look 
at $DVCS blame I can see that "Ouch! Syntax error" changed that logic, and 
if I then look at the patch, it may be quite easy to see what the syntax 
error was and how I fixed it incorrectly.

One could easily do this hacking on a separate branch, then merge --no-ff 
into the main branch, and submit that.  You'd have one logical top-level 
commit plus the whole history leading to it if you care.

Also, I don't get why git people are so uptight about this.

"Dirty history" is not only tolerated, but the *only* sane option with, 
lesse...  rcs cvs svn darcs tla baz (bzr?)

Only the git and hg people seem to care (and the git people a lot more than 
hg people).

-- John