On 4/8/2020 4:05 PM, Jeff King wrote: > 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). Then I suppose we should focus on naming merge commits with this property: A merge commit that is not TREESAME to its first parent (but is TREESAME to a later parent). The part in parentheses may be optional, because a merge commit that is not TREESAME to any parent will be included by every history mode. In my latest attempt at documentation, I called these merges "diverters" yet still used "--include-diversions". Here are a few other words that we could use: * diverters or diversions * redirects * switches (think railroad switch). Synonym: exchange * detours The "switch" or "exchange" words are probably bad because they have noun _and_ verb forms. Or we could look again at the history results as a whole to find inspiration for the command-line option: * --merge-trail Thanks, -Stolee
