On Thu, Jun 2, 2022 at 10:08 AM Tao Klerks <tao@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi folks, > > I'm wondering whether it's possible to perform a (non-conflicting) > cherry pick without impacting the working tree (or index). > > I understand Elijah Newren has been working on git-merge-tree changes > that would allow for simulating (and even saving) merge commits > without affecting the index or working tree, and I could imagine > that's a piece of how such a thing could/should work, but I'm not > terribly clear on the relationship between merges and cherry-picks. > > It *seems* as though I could enact something functionally equivalent > to a cherry-pick by first creating a (temporary) "--ours" merge commit > on the target branch, pretending to have merged the parent commit of > the cherry-pickable one, and then merging the cherry-pick commit > itself on top of that. The resulting tree could be used as the basis > for a final commit on top of the original tip of the target branch, if > that merge were clean, and otherwise fail saying "there are conflicts, > go do things properly in a working tree pls". > > I'm not sure whether this is the right way to conceive of > cherry-picking, however, or whether it makes more sense to conceive of > it as a single-commit rebase. The merge --ours stuff is going down a weird path that I don't recommend, but thinking of it as a single-commit rebase is good. In fact, the default rebase backend was originally written by calling cherry-pick for each commit in question. > Is there a relationship between > git-merge-tree and rebases? The patches I submitted do not have the ability for rebases to be built from git-merge-tree. There's a debate over whether my series should be tweaked to enable it. Peruse the thread over at https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqh78nj0q0.fsf@gitster.g/ if you want to read some of the discussion, as well as see discussion of how merging and cherry-picks/rebases are related. > Is there an aspiration to develop "server > side rebase" also at some stage? Yes, already in progress and possibly usable for simple cases. Haven't had some time to work on it for a while (~4 months, sigh), but will definitely get some time in late June/early July to carry it on. You can check out the "replay" branch of github.com/newren/git if you're curious.
