3 ms·

My bad experience with squash merging was with Stash at my last job. Some developers there thought the "clean history" was so worth it they made squash-merging

My bad experience with squash merging was with Stash at my last job. Some developers there thought the "clean history" was so worth it they made squash-merging the default merge strategy. The result: the git repository (at least in Stash) slowed to a crawl, because the comments to the commits were several hundred MiB. It was nuts. Never seen a git hosting site go that slow before. Actually had to replace the whole repo with another, more or less wiping history (kept the old slow repo just in case, of course), and disabling that damn squash-merge button.

yawaramin 2y ago
Sounds like the problem was not squash merging, but the slow and buggy implementation of Stash (hilariously bad naming for a git-related product btw).
- lucasoshiro 2y ago
  > hilariously bad naming for a git-related product btw) I only understood what "Stash" is in this situation after your comment. Looks like it is an Atlassian product that was renamed: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/bitbucket-rebrand-faq-779298912.html https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/bitbucket-r... Funny that they don't mention the name collision as reason for renaming it...
  - strawhatguy 2y ago
    I think Atlassian built their own, and bought the other. And now it's bitbucket. Maybe nothing left of Stash anymore. Maybe that's a good thing.
- strawhatguy 2y ago
  Yeah, it was Atlassian's git thing, or one they bought, and combined it with bitbucket or something. I'll say it was with the configuration and the buggy implementation of squash merging button with Stash. After replacing the repo, people were amazed with how fast it was. Also apparently I became notorious as the committer of the whole repository, since first commit was mine!
Jcowell 2y ago
I never keep the comments of the commit when squash merging. Only a sensible title of the PR and the number so it can be found. All the details are then in the PR where the more nuanced discussion is had.
- strawhatguy 2y ago
  If you're using squash merging, yes. But I find it better to do merge commits anyway. I mean doctor up your PR so it's one commit and you can hide your mistakes, I mean, development process, before you open the PR, of course, but the button on your git-hosting tool should just be a 'merge'. As an aside, I find myself doing amend commits all the time these days.
lucasoshiro 2y ago
> the comments to the commits were several hundred MiB I did't even thought about it. In fact, those are hundreds of lines that no one would read, as the commits are lost and you can't do anything with them...
- strawhatguy 2y ago
  Totally, but that's what was there. For background, I think the comment created would be a combination of all the comments in all the commits in that branch. Horrid. I hadn't even heard of squash commits before this, and we looked into it because the Stash site kept timing out. All the people that had built it was just shrug, Stash sucks, always been this way, like all seniors-that-are-actually-juniors-because-big-corp-can't-keep-good-folks-to-teach-them do. I mean maybe the tool sucks, but at least give it a fair chance first.

yawaramin 2y ago

Sounds like the problem was not squash merging, but the slow and buggy implementation of Stash (hilariously bad naming for a git-related product btw).

lucasoshiro 2y ago
> hilariously bad naming for a git-related product btw) I only understood what "Stash" is in this situation after your comment. Looks like it is an Atlassian product that was renamed: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/bitbucket-rebrand-faq-779298912.html https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/bitbucket-r... Funny that they don't mention the name collision as reason for renaming it...
- strawhatguy 2y ago
  I think Atlassian built their own, and bought the other. And now it's bitbucket. Maybe nothing left of Stash anymore. Maybe that's a good thing.
strawhatguy 2y ago
Yeah, it was Atlassian's git thing, or one they bought, and combined it with bitbucket or something. I'll say it was with the configuration and the buggy implementation of squash merging button with Stash. After replacing the repo, people were amazed with how fast it was. Also apparently I became notorious as the committer of the whole repository, since first commit was mine!

Jcowell 2y ago

I never keep the comments of the commit when squash merging. Only a sensible title of the PR and the number so it can be found. All the details are then in the PR where the more nuanced discussion is had.

strawhatguy 2y ago
If you're using squash merging, yes. But I find it better to do merge commits anyway. I mean doctor up your PR so it's one commit and you can hide your mistakes, I mean, development process, before you open the PR, of course, but the button on your git-hosting tool should just be a 'merge'. As an aside, I find myself doing amend commits all the time these days.

lucasoshiro 2y ago

> the comments to the commits were several hundred MiB I did't even thought about it. In fact, those are hundreds of lines that no one would read, as the commits are lost and you can't do anything with them...

strawhatguy 2y ago
Totally, but that's what was there. For background, I think the comment created would be a combination of all the comments in all the commits in that branch. Horrid. I hadn't even heard of squash commits before this, and we looked into it because the Stash site kept timing out. All the people that had built it was just shrug, Stash sucks, always been this way, like all seniors-that-are-actually-juniors-because-big-corp-can't-keep-good-folks-to-teach-them do. I mean maybe the tool sucks, but at least give it a fair chance first.