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> I had a colleague (smart guy, lots of impressive Ivy League creds after his name) who just _insisted_ that rebasing was evil. There is an historical reason f

by dahart 2y ago

> I had a colleague (smart guy, lots of impressive Ivy League creds after his name) who just _insisted_ that rebasing was evil. There is an historical reason for this. It is a hyperbolic marketing point of view invented by Richard Hipp, the author of SQLite, and of Fossil, in order to try to sell Fossil as being superior to Git. “Rebase is a lie” has been a meme ever since he published an article titled “Rebase Considered Harmful”, which has been posted to HN many times. Because he has contributed a lot to open source software development and because SQLite is so widely used, a lot of people respect everything he says and so this unfortunate idea has spread and gets repeated, even by otherwise very smart people. Dr. Hipp has made appearances on HN arguing that rebase is bad, and even told me it should be likened to criminal activity. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133188) The Fossil documentation still has remnants of it, but it has been softened over the years. Luckily it seems to be dying, and I think the Fossil team might be coming around to the realization that this negative attack smear hyperbole is ultimately not helping Fossil grow. This is the primary sticking point for me and the reason I won’t use Fossil. I’m actually quite interested in trying it, but not until the (ironically) dishonest claims about Git and it’s goals are taken down.

000ooo000 2y ago
>[From the linked HN comment] To erase an entry in the financial ledger of a company is fraud. It is a felony. [..] I believe that VCSes should be treated similarly. [..] once you check-in the change - it then becomes part of the permanent record. To alter that transaction after the fact is akin to felony fraud. Yikes. To give a charitable interpretation, that's quite an extreme view. Financial ledgers and VCS histories are not equal and they serve different purposes; the primary purpose of VCS history being to aid in the understanding of the current state of the codebase. In some cases, the "true" activity may provide that understanding, and in others, it may hinder it. Squashing a PR-requested change like "rename new variable based on PR feedback" seems sensible as it reduces noise in the history - definitely not what I'd call fraudulent. To me commits are like documentation and I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to refine that documentation if I think I can improve it for a future reader.

by dahart 2y ago

000ooo000 2y ago

>[From the linked HN comment] To erase an entry in the financial ledger of a company is fraud. It is a felony. [..] I believe that VCSes should be treated similarly. [..] once you check-in the change - it then becomes part of the permanent record. To alter that transaction after the fact is akin to felony fraud. Yikes. To give a charitable interpretation, that's quite an extreme view. Financial ledgers and VCS histories are not equal and they serve different purposes; the primary purpose of VCS history being to aid in the understanding of the current state of the codebase. In some cases, the "true" activity may provide that understanding, and in others, it may hinder it. Squashing a PR-requested change like "rename new variable based on PR feedback" seems sensible as it reduces noise in the history - definitely not what I'd call fraudulent. To me commits are like documentation and I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to refine that documentation if I think I can improve it for a future reader.