Git rebase in depth

Re:Git rebase in depth by dahart on Friday May 10, 2019 @11:53AM (#19878943)

What’s the matter with reachable and unreachable commits? Commits no longer needed should be unreachable and cleaned eventually, that’s a feature. Git is fantastic about keeping the unreachable commits for long enough that should I actually need them for any reason, they’re usually there. The default is 90 days. The number of times I need to dig into the reflog for any reason is very low, and always because I made a mistake. The number of times I’ve lost a commit irrevocably because it was cleaned before I needed it is 0.

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Re:Git rebase in depth by ZeroGravitas on Friday May 10, 2019 @12:55PM (#19879678)

> The number of times I need to dig into the reflog for any reason is very low, and always because I made a mistake.

A good UI should allow you to recover from mistakes. Like the trashcan vs rm example everyone is using.

It's good that git doesn't permanently delete stuff, it's bad that you need to be a relative expert to know that. If git branch showed rebased branches and told you they would disappear in x days then beginners might feel less fear and embrace the power of git faster.

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Re:Git rebase in depth by dahart on Friday May 10, 2019 @01:30PM (#19880118)

This is a little hyperbolic though, because git does have UI above the reflog designed for catching the most common mistakes. The reflog is a powertool, it is not the default UI, and most people never need to look at the reflog.

git rebase has an "abort" feature when you need to redo it. git has tag & branch & stash features if you want to save what you're doing before you rebase. The problem with keeping and showing rebased branches are that 1- you don't need them after the rebase is successful. You only need them when the rebase is going badly, and 2- you'd have a lot of unnecessary noise pile up. I often rebase multiple times before every push. I don't want to see them all, you probably don't either.

That said, I fully agree that git's UI could be better and help beginners feel less fear!

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