New evolve docs, take 2: 1/3: index.rst

Greg Ward greg at gerg.ca
Fri May 30 20:44:49 UTC 2014


On 30 May 2014, Angel Ezquerra said:
> Greg, very nice write up. I have a couple of small comments below.
[...]
> > Some of the things you can do with ``evolve`` are:
> >
> >   * Fix a mistake immediately: "Oops! I just committed a changeset
> >     with a syntax error—I'll fix that and amend the changeset so no
> >     one sees my mistake." (While this is possible using existing
> >     features of core Mercurial, ``evolve`` makes it safer.)
> 
> I'd say that evolve makes it safE :-)

If there were no such thing as .hg/strip-backup/, then I would agree.
But strip isn't *completely* reckless or unsafe. It's just that
obsolesence is *safer*.

> >   * Fix a mistake a little bit later: "Oops! I broke the tests three
> >     commits back, but only noticed it now—I'll just back up, fix my
> >     mistake, amend the bad changeset, and evolve history to update the
> >     affected changesets."
> 
> I think "back up" is confusing in this context. I guess you mean going back
> to the broken revision, don't you? Or do you mean creating a backup of you
> working directory changes?

Oooh! Good point. Hmmmm. How about:

  * Fix a mistake a little bit later: "Oops! I broke the tests three
    commits back, but only noticed it now—I'll just update back to the
    bad changeset, fix my mistake, amend the changeset, and evolve
    history to update the affected changesets."

Another possible change just occurred to me: instead of "affected
changesets", say "downstream changesets". Or maybe "descendants"? I
just want to give a hint about instability and evolve, not tell the
whole story.

       Greg



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