Request for rebaseif extension to be provided by default with rebase

[Sune Foldager]

On 2011-05-24 10:59, Marcus Lindblom wrote:
>Sune Foldager skrev 2011-05-23 16:15:
>>On 2011-05-23 16:09, Adrian Buehlmann wrote:
>>
>>>I think that starting e.g. kdiff3 on a conflict during 'hg pull
>>>--rebase' is
>>>indeed daunting for users.
>>
>>Yes... this is also why I never use pull --rebase or fetch, and we
>>constructed
>>our workflow at Edlund (where I work) so people initiate the rebasing or
>>merging manually.
>
>Doing a plain 'hg rebase' with massive conflicts is daunting. Merge 
>is safer then, but gives more rubbish. Hence you need to decide. Help 
>with that decision is appreciated for non-VC wizards.

If you have just one changeset, say, you get the exact same conflicts
from merging and rebasing, and this is almost true for multiple changesets
as well.

However, it's nice to know (with merge) that the original commit is left
as it was. But see below.

>If you're not a mercurial wizard, you might have a hard time to 
>decide, and would like some help from the computer to check if rebase 
>or merge is the best option.

Sure... I just still don't think the criterion for that decision has much
to do with the existence of conflicts or not.

>This is a feature that helps the user separate new functionality from 
>the integration step of said functionality, and prevents information 
>loss if manual intervention is needed to combine these two pieces of 
>data.

Yes, that it prevents information loss is a good thing; this is why we
wrap hg rebase at work to backup the original changesets in a bundle first,
so you can easily start over.

But this is a meta-problem, that rebase should solve... e.g. by taking backups
and such. There is also hg rebase --abort.

That said, there are certainly cases where it's good to separate the steps,
and for that use merge. I just don't see how an automatic decision can be made
about that :)

>IMHO, I think you'd have to think a bit outside the linux hacker box 
>to appreciate rebaseif's merits. ;)

Well, I'm hardly in the box... apart from working on Mercurial, I do closed
source bussiness programming for a living :p

-Sune :)