Re: Feature Request: `git commit --amend-to`

[Glen Choo <chooglen@google.com>]

Carlo Arenas <carenas@gmail.com> writes:
>   git commit --fixup reword:$SHA && EDITOR=true git rebase
> --interactive --autosquash "$SHA^"
>
> granted it is not 1 command, but usually I find it useful to do
> several of those and then one single
> rebase at the end.

This is fairly similar to what I use, though I use this through the
Magit Emacs plugin.

My concern with "--amend-to" is that the semantics aren't as simple as
--amend.

With --amend, you know you're working on the branch tip, so
it's relatively simple to discard the last commit and create a new one.

With something like --amend-to, you aren't just modifying a single
commit, you are also introducing a potential merge conflict with every
commit after that. You would have to provide some kind of facility for
users to fix the merge conflicts. A command like git rebase --autosquash
does a good job at communicating to users that they are actually doing a
rebase and they need to be prepared to fix problems through a rebase UX.
However, git commit --amend-to communicates none of that. A user who
takes a cursory glance at git commit --amend-to has no idea that they
are potentially comitting to a rebase.

I personally think the current UI makes sense given how Git works. I
also wish that it were easier to do --amend-to, but I think the problem
has more to do with how Git manages merges and conflicts and less to do
with having shortcuts in the CLI.