Re: [PATCH] Re: rebase -i: auto-squash commits

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

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> On Wed, 17 Jun 2009, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> ...
>> The commit not only must begin with "squash to " but also there has to 
>> be a matching commit whose message begins with the remainder of the 
>> title of the "squash to" commit _in the range you are rebasing 
>> INTERACTIVELY_.
>> 
>> In addition, the resulting rebase insn is presented in the editor, and 
>> in a rare case where you do have such a commit, you can rearrange it 
>> back.
>
> Well, that really sounds pretty awkward to me.  I regularly call such 
> commits "amend".  If there is a risk I confuse myself as to which commit 
> needs to be amended, I use "amend.<short-hint>".
>
> I'd really rather stay with "fixup".  And as I use single-letter commands 
> quite often, I'd also rather stay away from that magic "!".  And by 
> "magic" I really mean that: people will not find that magic intuitive at 
> all.
>
> My vote is for "fixup".

I am too tired to either make the final judgement nor proposal on this
topic now, but before I forget here is one tangent.

I also often use "magic" commit log message in other occasions.  The most
important is "[DONTMERGE]" prefix to somebody else's commit I queue to
'pu' (or leave unmerged even to 'pu'---just keeping on a topic branch).  I
accept a patch with "am" and then "amend" after review when I find that it
needs more work.  One day I am hoping to write a pre-merge hook that
forbids commits marked with such magic to come into 'next' and down.

The point?

Earlier somebody objected to a command that changes behaviour based on
what is in the commit log message, but for the private commits the patch
under discussion deals with and the ones I mark with "[DONTMERGE]", the
commit log message _is_ the right place to leave a mark for commands to
take notice and act differently.

Of course we _could_ use notes for that, but that won't play well with
rebasing I suppose ...