Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > Perhaps you would see what is going on more clearly if you replace > your "git log" with "git rev-list". > > If your pre-graft/pre-replace histories were > > A (first) <--- B (second) <--- C (third) master > X (rFirst) <--- Y (rSecond) <--- Z (rThird) old > > then your "graft" tells Git "B's parent is Z, not A. If you run > "rev-list master", it will give you "C B Z Y X". The discrepancy > (relative to the true history) brought in by "grafting" is that > nowhere in "cat-file commit B" you would find Z, even though "log" > and "rev-list" pretends as if Z is a (and the) parent of B. > > Your "replace" tells Git "A records what Z records". If you run > "rev-list master", it will give you "C B A Y X". > > A fake history made by "replace" does not have the same discrepancy > as "grafting"; "cat-file commit B" names A as its parent, and asking > what A is gives what actually is in Z, i.e. "cat-file commit A" > shows what "cat-file commit Z" would give you. The discrepancy with > the reality "replacing" gives you is that hashing what you got from > "cat-file commit A" does not hash to A (it obviously has to hash to > Z). > >> From my POV, replace is more about >> "telling Git that this commit (and its parents) is really that one (and >> its parents)". > > Your "POV" does not match reality; replace is about telling Git to > give contents recorded for object Z when anybody asks the contents > recorded for object A. To put it differently, what you did in your two examples with graft and replace are not equivalent. With graft, you told commit B that its parent is not commit A but commit Z. If you wanted to do the equivalent with replace, you would have replaced commit B with an otherwise identical commit B' that records Z as its parent. But you didn't; instead, you replaced commit A with Z. And if you did the equivalent with "replace", your "git rev-list" would have shown "C B Z Y X" (instead of "C B A Y X"), and when "git log" showed the second commit, it would have shown the contents of B' _and_ because Git still thinks it is showing the original B, it would have shown the notes for B. Something like this (totally untested) would let you replace B with an otherwise identical B' that has Z instead of A as its parent: $ Bprime=$(git cat-file commit master~ | sed -e "s/^parent .*/parent $(git rev-parse old)/" | git hash-object -w --stdin -t commit) $ git update-ref refs/replace/$(git rev-parse master~) $Bprime -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html