On Wed, Apr 08, 2020 at 12:46:41PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Our features written with the intent to be useful for one purpose > often end up being used for purposes other than what the feature was > originally written for (the "--pickaxe" has always been a bitter > example of this for me). > > For that reason, I am a bit hesitant to endorse "audit" exactly > because of the implication of "intent". Yeah, I agree with this. > I wonder if there is a simple-enough phrase to convey what the > latter half of above sentence says. "include" and "keep" are both > good verbs---normally we discard these merges, because they do not > contribute at the level of individual changes, but with the option, > we "include" or "keep" these merges in the output. It's not like > we keep _all_ the merges, but selected merges only. How do we > decide which merges to keep? > > I guess your "--first-merges" came from such a line of thought, and > is the closest among the five to what I have in mind, but it drops > too many words and loses too much meaning. > > "--keep-first-parent-merges", perhaps? FWIW, this name left me more confused, because "first-parent merges" isn't an already-defined term I knew. And it seems like all merges have a first parent. Having read the patch description, I guess it's "a merge which isn't TREESAME to its first-parent". I can't think of a more succinct way to name that, though. And possibly if we gave that definition in the documentation, that would be enough. The name doesn't have to be a complete description; it only has to make sense once you know what you're trying to do (and be memorable enough). -Peff
