Re: [filter-repo] How to reorder commits

[Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2022 at 04:18:48PM -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:
> > - keep the cover letter at the start of the series in order to cleanly
> >   delineate where their work starts (and thus avoid potential problems with
> >   rebases and finding fork-points with base branches, which tends to give
> >   newbies trouble)
> > - when the author is ready to submit their work, move the cover letter to the
> >   tip of the branch and tag it as "foo-bar-v1"
> > - when the author is ready to work on their changes, they run --reroll and we
> >   move the cover letter back to the start of the series, adding any necessary
> >   template "changes in vX" entries to it
> >
> > (or maybe it will go completely differently -- it's all very fluid right now)
> >
> > Basically, is git-filter-repo the right tool to reorder commits, or is it best
> > to go directly with fast-export/fast-import?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Konstantin
> 
> Generally, it makes no sense to reorder commits in filter-repo, nor
> does it make sense to do so using fast-export/fast-import directly.
> fast-export/fast-import don't "apply a diff" to get a new tree, they
> say "Make these files have these exact contents".  Perhaps an example
> would help to explain what I mean...

Thank you for the detailed reply, Elijah. You did convince that filter-repo is
not the right tool for this case, so I went with cherry-pick instead. Since my
case is very straightforward with simple ranges and a guarantee of no
conflicts, it's the most straightforward solution.

Cheers,
Konstantin