Re: [PATCH v7 0/5] making pull advice not to trigger when unneeded

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

>> To avoid the ugly-looking "strcmp()" in the above, we may need to
>> adjust "--ff" (fast-forward without creating an extra merge commit)
>> and "--no-ff" (create an extra merge commit when the history could
>> be fast-forwarded) to imply "merge", though.
>> ...
>
> Or do you mean --ff doesn't override --rebase? Therefore it's more of an
> internal conceptual change.

I meant "--ff/--no-ff" without saying anything between merge and
rebase would make merge implied.  It was merely for the purpose of
getting rid of !opt_ff in the condition there and such an implied
merge would be one way to ensure that rebase_unspecified becomes
false.

"--no-ff --rebase" (in any order) would be a nonsense combination,
as it asks "please create an extra merge commit even when the
history fast-forwards, but by the way I do not want merge I want
rebase" [*1*].  It should error out when the history fast-forwards,
I think, and it probably should also error out when the history does
not fast-forward, instead of rebasing.

"--ff --rebase" (in any order), on the other hand, would be "if the
history fast-forwards, just do so without creating an extra merge
commit, by the way, I prefer rebase and not merge".  If the history
fast-forwards, it is OK to just fast-forward (using the merge
backend if needed), as rebasing against the history that is ahead of
us would mean all our unique development since we diverged from them,
which is nothing, will be replayed on top of their history.  If the
history does not fast-forward, then the precondition of "--ff" part
does not hold, so just rebasing as if "--ff" does not exist would
probably be OK, too.

In any case, I haven't thought the opt_ff part of the expression
through.  During the review of v5 3/3 (and doing v7 5/5), what I was
more interested in was to ensure the verbosity option, which would
control how verbose a message we should be giving, can stay
independent of other conditionals, which would control if we even
need to error out and/or give hints.

Thanks.


[Footnote]

*1* Even though the current code may simply ignore --no-ff after the
control is given to the rebase codepath,