[Development] Please warn of force pushes...

[Olivier Goffart]

On Wednesday 24 April 2013 06:28:43 Kalinowski Maurice wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> there has been quite many comments about why rebasing might be complicated
> for some people, but so far I think the advantages for the WinRT branch has
> not been highlighted. So let me try to summarize why the team thinks that
> it is beneficial to do so:
> 
> a) We do lots of changes upstream and get them back into the WinRT branch
> very quickly this way. Of course we could do that via other means, but 

Normaly, the way git was designed, is to use merges for this workflow.
In principle, rebasing should only be used for private branches. 
And the winrt is not private. Not only it is public, but it is even part of 
the main repsitory.

You should only merge with dev when you really need a change from dev. You may 
also cherry pick, if you only want a single change.

Rebasing is harmfull if anyone else if following this branch.

So I would recommand doing merges instead of rebasing.

> b) the team bases on dev and wants to ensure that integration back into dev
> will be a simple step once the port is stable enough. Without any/much
> rebasing/squashing/history-rewrite efforts when time has come. 

Merging should be even easize than rebasing.


> For both previous ports (Android and iOS)  there have been lots of
> discussions how to get things back "properly", where so far we failed to
> make everyone happy. Taking a rebased branch seemed to be beneficial here.

I think the proper way to do it is to have the relevant maintainers of the 
code look at the non-trivial patches already now.
I beleive it was one of the problem with the android port, that it is a bit 
like a code drop when reviewing was too late.

> I do agree to Kai that having some official guidelines will benefit future
> ports as well, but I also fail to see why the WinRT branch now is so much
> of a difference compared to other ones. Maybe we should move the discussion
> into a generic one with WinRT being one example beside others instead of
> complaining about WinRT, but getting to no conclusion after all.

I encourage to use merges instead of rebasing.

That say, git has many possible workflows, and if rebasing is really better for 
the people working on winrt, then let it be.

-- 
Olivier 

Woboq - Qt services and support - http://woboq.com - http://code.woboq.org