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My point is, git doesn't let you edit history; it lets you make branches easily & the original history remains unaltered. It's trivially easy to detect altered
by falsedan 7y ago
My point is, git doesn't let you edit history; it lets you make branches easily & the original history remains unaltered. It's trivially easy to detect altered history, and talking about 'editing history' gives the impression that repos are vulnerable to attack.
- kadoban 7y agoWhat wording would you suggest to refer to these kinds of operations? Replacing history? You mentioned "altered" history, which to me isn't much different from "edited" or "modified", though maybe that was just a slip and not your preference? There does need to be some term for it. If I push a reordered branch, I clearly did more than nothing, even if we don't want to call that modifying history. I do question if any term will work perfectly, or if there is any full solution other than one learning git to an intermediate level before discussing it. The problem, as I see it, is that there are (at least) two concepts of history, there is the DAG of commits, where ancestors are older, and there are branch-heads where you can change what they point to in unrestricted ways (pretty much the reflog). I'm not sure English has a really good metaphor that's going to capture everything.