Re: Aborting git rebase --edit-todo

[Victor Toni <victor.toni@gmail.com>]

> It is rather unusual (or almost always wrong) to have a totally
> empty commit log or initial todo list, so it is understandable for
> Git in these situations to stop without doing anything further.
>
> There is no other sensible interpretations of what you are telling
> Git to you by returning an empty buffer---it is extremely unlikely
> you want to create a commit with no log message (without explicitly
> allowing it with --allow-empty-message, the command is likely to
> fail anyway), and it is extremely unlikely that you wanted to just
> reset the tip of the branch to the --onto commit.
>
> Once an interactive rebase session has started and you are given the
> remainder of the steps to edit and you give an empty buffer back,
> however, there are two possible interpretations that are equally
> sensible, I would think.
>
>  - One is that you are signaling that you are done with the rebase
>    session and all the remaining commits are to be discarded.
>
>  - The other is that you botched editing the todo list, and you wish
>    Git to give you another chance to edit it again.
>
> I think the implementor chose the first interpretation.  The "drop"
> insn is a relatively recent invention, and back when it was missing
> from the vocabulary, I do not think it was possible to say " discard
> all the rest" without emptying the todo list, so that design is
> understandable.
>
> Now we have the "drop" verb, the latter interpretation becomes
> possible without making it impossible for the user to express the
> former.  It might be a good idea to
>
>  (1) save away the original before allowing --edit-todo to edit,
>
>  (2) open the editor, and
>
>  (3) when getting an empty buffer back, go back to step (2) using
>      the back-up made in step (1).
>
> Either way, the todo list editor buffer can have additional comment
> instructing what happens when the buffer is emptied.
>

Personally I would like to see your approach (1,2,3) implemented
because it is not destructive. If the user wants to achieve something
different he can retry.
Option / interpretation a)

>  - One is that you are signaling that you are done with the rebase
>    session and all the remaining commits are to be discarded.

is more difficult to recover from. (I'm still thankful for `.git/logs/HEAD`)