There’s another concern: repository bloat.[1] Ts'o does not want this link to be a mandatory part of the final commit which everyone needs to get on every pull.

There’s another concern: repository bloat.[1] Ts'o does not want this link to be a mandatory part of the final commit which everyone needs to get on every pull.[2] His own proposal does not necessitate keeping “history blobs” around: just use Git commit metadata (trailers) and leave the pointed-at data (beyond the cherry-pick backlinks) in an external store like Gerrit. I think other commenters who suggested no-changes-to-core-git solutions might have mentioned git-notes, which is similar to the external store point since git-notes are completely optional refs (i.e. if you have notes on your commits in your tree then no one else needs to know about it; those who want the metadata can fetch it, those who don’t can save their bandwidth). [1]: > If the complaint about Gerrit is that it's not a core part of Git, the challenge is (a) how to carry the code review comments in the git repository, and (b) do so in a while that it doesn't bloat the core repository, since most of the time, you don't want or need to keep a local copy of all of the code review comments going back since the beginning of the project. [2]: I’m guessing that people who want a “replaces” link would also want to make it optional. Keeping in line with the best-of-both-worlds mantra.