Re: Git migration docs

[Mathias Hasselmann <mathias hasselmann gmx de>]

Am Donnerstag, den 15.01.2009, 22:57 +0100 schrieb Murray Cumming:
> On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 22:32 +0100, Mathias Hasselmann wrote:
> > So maybe we should just drop the old habit of creating large self
> > contained commits which require exhaustive ChangeLog entries: Micro
> > patches that focus on just one change are much easier to review.
> 
> But shouldn't interdependent changes be reviewed together? I generally
> find that these many mini-commits make it hard for me to see the big
> picture. I tend to wish that the person had combined the many
> local-commits into one atomic commit when pushing it to the main
> repository.
> 

Well, that grouping is easy to do:

      * When developing a feature in a distributed repository and
        sending a pull request, it is common practise to place all
        related patches into a dedicated feature branch. You get the
        full picture by following that branch from merge point to HEAD.
        Tools like giggle are extremely helpful in reading the branch.
      * When sending the merge request per mail, git provides the git
        format-patch tool, which generates numbered series of patches.
        Therefore you also get the full picture.

If you still insist on getting a big patch, you can type "git diff
merge-point HEAD". Or your create a new branch and squash the related
commits with interactive rebase. Or you combine the patches with
combinediff from the patchutils package...

So there are countless practical possibilities to __automatically__
convert micro-patches into one large self-contained patch, but I cannot
imagine a trivial method to split a self-contained patch into meaningful
micro patches.

Ciao,
Mathias
-- 
Mathias Hasselmann <mathias hasselmann gmx de>
Personal Blog: http://taschenorakel.de/mathias/
Openismus GmbH: http://www.openismus.com/