Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: reminder: winning smallish project

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Miles Bader <address@hidden>

    > It's like bookkeeping -- you never
    > want to delete history, so you can't erase the record that you made a
    > mistake, but you can correct the mistake, by adding a correction entry.
    > In that case, the mistaken entry probably doesn't correspond to any
    > real world event -- it's a mistake -- but there's a record of it.

    > If you're correcting a mistaken changeset, you want to do the same
    > thing.  The normal act of replay --reverse is a funnier operation
    > (even if the implementation is more straightforward).

Bookkeepers have erasors and use pencil for some things.

A simple case when I certainly _do_ want to erase history is something
like:

        % tla get proj--mine--1.0 wd
        % cd wd
        % tla replay --exact proj--yours--1.0--patch-41
        % [config/build/test]
        # "oops ... grabbed the wrong patch"
        % tla replay --exact --reverse proj--yours--1.0--patch-41
        % tla replay --exact proj--yours--1.0--patch-42

Whether or not tossing in some extra `commit's there means that I now
do or do not want to use `--reverse --source' is really a
context-specific question.

(There: that example also illustrates one of the many reasons why
there will never be a "magic" merge command that always does the 
right thing.  It could never tell whether or not to `--reverse' or
`--reverse --source' without being explicitly told.)

-t