Question about features

[Ben Finney]

Tom Widmer <tom.widmer at googlemail.com> writes:

> Bazaar is quite bad at history editing of this kind I think. It's very
> hard to uncommit changes that have already been incorporated into
> other branches/looms/pipelines.

I would rephrase that as: Bazaar is very good at ensuring the branch is
always in a fit state for sharing with anyone, if you choose to do so.
It doesn't force me to decide when I need to avoid certain operations
that don't play well with other branches.

> Really, you just need to make another commit that corrects the
> problem.

Yes.

> Note that both of these will tend to keep the history of all your
> experiments, which you seemed to want to avoid.

I'll point to a 2008 article I recently found examining this:

    Despite the disadvantages, I regularly hear people, mainly git
    users, say how great rebase is. When I ask why the answer is always
    something like “to clean up my commits”. So I'll ask what they want
    to clean up, and why. Eventually I realize that they don't actually
    want to lose their history, what they really want control over how
    their code is displayed and delivered.

    […]

    So what can you do instead of using rebase? Stop conflating “the
    series of patches I want to share” with “the revision history of my
    work”.

    <URL:http://bemusement.org/diary/2008/July/29/rebase-criticism>

I imagine the article's thrust is also applicable to Darcs's history
altering operations.

-- 
 \       “Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It |
  `\        indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.” |
_o__)                                                —Henry L. Mencken |
Ben Finney