[petsc-dev] does next model mess up our histories

[Satish Balay]

On Wed, 1 Oct 2014, Barry Smith wrote:

> 
>   For large changes that I especially expect to break portability issues I make a set of changes, merge into next to check on all machines and then fix the issues that come up in tests the next day. This can happen a few times. 
> 
>   Now if I only did testing on my own machine during these several days, since my branch never touches another branch I can rebase it, I can reset some changes if I realize they are really stupid, then I could put a very nice commit into master with a great history.
> 
>    How can I do this after I have put all the trash into next along the way? Is there a modification of the next model we can use that would allow me to have clearer histories? How do other groups handle this, we know Linus doesn’t allow ugly histories so how can the model work for them?
> 

I think its valid to 'git revert trash-branch' from next - and then
'git merge clean/rebased-branch' [per current workflow]

http://git-scm.com/blog/2010/03/02/undoing-merges.html
git revert -m 1 [sha_of_C8]

I'm not sure what happens if there are multiple merges from the
'trash-branch' to next.  Perhaps we would have to revert each of the
merge points [in the reverse order] - and then merge in the rebased
branch.

In this case - I think its ok to have the trashy history in the
feature-branch - until its complete - and then do the 'rebase/cleanup'

Satish