yeah, history rewriting is something i've never needed - but then i've never had problems branching and merging which i've heard can be 'nightmarish'. i don't think it is, suck it up and get on with it and it takes 2 minutes it just looks scary up front, even before dvcs. fyi i use git at work... it is 'okay', but it has not solved any problems for me over, e.g. svn with a bunch of scripts.