From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760648AbYEQAEW (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 May 2008 20:04:22 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753649AbYEQAEI (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 May 2008 20:04:08 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:38821 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1759531AbYEQAEG (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 May 2008 20:04:06 -0400 Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 17:03:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Thomas Gleixner cc: LKML , Ingo Molnar , "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: [GIT pull] x86 fixes for 2.6.26 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: User-Agent: Alpine 1.10 (LFD 962 2008-03-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, 17 May 2008, Thomas Gleixner wrote: > > We have topic branches. How should we keep those topic branches up > to date ? By rebasing ? Listen to yourself. They are "topic" branches. They are supposed to do one thing. You keep them "uptodate" by doing your work on them, _not_ by merging everybody elses work into them. > > This happens almost every time somebody starts using git properly: at that > > point the rebasing no longer hides bad habits. > > We did not rebase at all. You _used_ to rebase. That hides bad workflows, because it hides the fact that your "topic branch" is not a topic branch at all, but something that tries to do much more than it's stated purpose. So now, when you stopped rebasing, the fact that you keep updating your topic branches with code that has nothing to do with your topic (ie code that I randomly merged from me) is visible as the unnecessary merges. Yes, doing a merge occasionally just to not fell *too* far behind is sane. But when you have twice as many merges as you have real commits, you're doing something wrong. At that point, you're no longer a topic branch, you're just a mess of other peoples development merged on top of random commits you do. See the difference? You literally merged four times in two days. That's not "keeping reasonably up-to-date", that's just messy and OCD. Linus