[mehrdadn]

> The trouble is it's viral. By the time you've figured out it's happened, other people have probably pulled from that branch; at best they've spent time merging in the force-pushed version. More likely they've done that and then built more work on top of it, so either both versions make it into mainline and everyone is resolving conflicts, or you have to ask that person to rebase their work and create another chance for the same problem to occur.

First, I don't understand how you're suggesting this situation arises. You're talking about a bunch of people all pulling from a branch while the only guy working on it is merrily force-pushing code and has absolutely no clue that anyone else is building work on top of it. Ignoring the questionable assumption that any commit on any branch is a sane one to build on top of -- why/how in the world is there zero communication on your team when you guys start building on each others' work?

Second... how is this any different from when the dev just gentle-pushes new commits instead of force-pushing?! You all will still end up having to resolve conflicts just the same when you rebase on top of their branch again... it sounds to me like what you're against is actually rebasing, only disguised as force-pushing.

[lmm]

> First, I don't understand how you're suggesting this situation arises. You're talking about a bunch of people all pulling from a branch while the only guy working on it is merrily force-pushing code and has absolutely no clue that anyone else is building work on top of it. Why in the world is there no communication on your team?

Code can be communication too. It's really nice to be able to just pull someone's branch (that they maybe mentioned in standup) without having to interrupt them to tell them you're doing it.

> Second... how is this any different from when the dev just gentle-pushes new commits instead of force-pushing?! You all will still end up having to resolve conflicts just the same when you rebase on top of their branch again... it sounds to me like what you're against is actually rebasing, only disguised as force-pushing.

When a dev gentle-pushes new commits and people merge them into their branches, it doesn't cause problems if they resolve conflicts differently, and other people who pull from their branches in turn don't have to keep re-resolving the same conflicts.

Rebase and force push are two sides of the same coin, let's not argue semantics. I say "no force pushing" rather than "no rebasing" because local rebase before you push doesn't cause problems.

[mehrdadn]

> Code can be communication too. It's really nice to be able to just pull someone's branch (that they maybe mentioned in standup) without having to interrupt them to tell them you're doing it.

But then if they communicated to you (during stand-up of whatever) their branch is ready to be used to build on, then they've made that code public and would avoid force-pushing, which is what I was saying? Conversely if they haven't told you then you wouldn't just randomly pick a commit and start building on it?

> When a dev gentle-pushes new commits and people merge them into their branches, it doesn't cause problems if they resolve conflicts differently, and other people who pull from their branches in turn don't have to keep re-resolving the same conflicts. > Rebase and force push are two sides of the same coin, let's not argue semantics. I say "no force pushing" rather than "no rebasing" because local rebase before you push doesn't cause problems.

AH so you're fundamentally against ever e.g. having a pull --rebase workflow on any branch you've ever pushed to any remote... regardless of who's working on what, what communication has occurred, whether that branch will even exist 2 hours from now, or whatever. Merge is the only valid approach in your mind, period. Honestly I have zero hope of trying to convince you merge isn't a size-fits-all dogma, so I won't try anymore except to point out that git supports both workflows for a reason, and its own documentation is clear that neither is strictly superior to the other: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Rebasing#_rebas...

[lmm]

> But then if they communicated to you (during stand-up of whatever) their branch is ready to be used to build on, then they've made that code public and would avoid force-pushing

Every morning everyone mentions what they're working on (and so implicitly what their current branches are about). Most of the time there's no particular reason to pick their branch up, but sometimes there is. The only way that can work is if you never force-push the branches you're working on.

> Conversely if they haven't told you then you wouldn't just randomly pick a commit and start building on it?

Anything that's pushed to the repo is presumed good to pick up, that's what the repo is for. If it's not ready for others to pick up then why push it to the repo at all?

> AH so you're fundamentally against ever e.g. having a pull --rebase workflow on any branch you've ever pushed to any remote... regardless of who's working on what, what communication has occurred, whether that branch will even exist 2 hours from now, or whatever. Merge is the only valid approach in your mind, period. Honestly I have zero hope of trying to convince you merge isn't a size-fits-all dogma, so I won't try anymore except to point out that git supports both workflows for a reason, and its own documentation is clear that neither is strictly superior to the other: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Rebasing#_rebas....

Did you read your own link? The last paragraph says exactly what I've been saying.

[mehrdadn]

> Anything that's pushed to the repo is presumed good to pick up, that's what the repo is for. If it's not ready for others to pick up then why push it to the repo at all?

You push... because you have 2+ repos you want to sync? Because you don't want to lose data if you mess things up locally? Because the remote repo runs tests on push that you want to run before you've finished the entire branch? Because someone else needs to be able to pick up your code if you get hit by a bus tomorrow? Because your boss or coworkers might need to be able to look at your code in an emergency? There are a million reasons to push that don't imply every commit on every pushed branch being suitable for splitting into another branch...

> Did you read your own link? The last paragraph says exactly what I've been saying.

It says that because they're (a) assuming if you've pushed code then you've probably published, which is a safer assumption but exactly what I've been arguing is not necessarily the case (and I've been trying to explain when it's not), and more generally (b) because they're erring on the side of caution. Which makes sense; I'd give the same advice to someone who's learning git. That's is exactly why the previous paragraph says "hopefully you’ll see that it’s not that simple" and "it’s up to you to decide which one is best for your particular situation". Those sentences aren't there for decoration. And it's why there is such a thing called a rebase workflow and why they made --force-with-lease and... again, I can't hope to convince you of the value of this workflow, just like how I can't convince you to use tabs over spaces (or tabs and spaces...). What I was doing was explaining how/when it can be useful while avoiding the problems you're hoping to avoid if you haven't already dogmatically rejected the rebase workflow from the start.

[lmm]

> You push... because you have 2+ repos you want to sync? Because you don't want to lose data if you mess things up locally? Because the remote repo runs tests on push that you want to run before you've finished the entire branch? Because someone else needs to be able to pick up your code if you get hit by a bus tomorrow? Because your boss or coworkers might need to be able to look at your code in an emergency? There are a million reasons to push that don't imply every commit on every pushed branch being suitable for splitting into another branch...

They pretty much do though? If your team isn't in the habit of force-pushing then almost all commits are suitable for pulling into another branch, it's not some big deal that requires special preparation. If it's good enough to run remote tests on, it's compiling and presumably working locally. If it's good enough for someone else to pick up if you were hit by a bus, someone might want to pull from it anyway. If it's worth your boss or coworkers looking at in an emergency, it's worth them looking at in a non-emergency.

Of course pulling a co-worker's branch before it's made it into master will (generally) get you less polished code, with some risk that the remote tests will be broken, there will be code that would fail code review, etc.. That's understood and that's the price you pay for getting immediate access to their work-in-progress. It's still very worthwhile as a way to understand the direction of their changes and avoid a lot of unnecessary conflicts in the cases where you know you're working in the same area.

> What I was doing was explaining how/when it can be useful while avoiding the problems you're hoping to avoid if you haven't already dogmatically rejected the rebase workflow from the start.

You didn't explain anything! I gave a specific explanation of how rebasing will cause more conflicts than non-forcefully pushing new commits (and FWIW that comes from direct personal experience of both workflows). You went straight from arguing about terminology to accusing me of dogmatism.

[mehrdadn]

> If it's good enough to run remote tests on, it's compiling and presumably working locally.

To you "he pushed his commit and tests got triggered" implies "his commit is compiling and working fine locally" and therefore implies "ready to build on top of"? You never push incomplete work while intending to continue it the next day... maybe on another machine? You never run across build failures on other machines when everything builds fine locally? You never see bugs that don't repro locally? You never trigger or re-trigger tests to narrow down bugs you can't repro locally but know to exist? Every single commit you push can be assumed to build on everyone's machines, pass all tests, and provide a proper foundation to branch from? And these are all true for everyone you work with too?

> You didn't explain anything!

I explained a heck of a lot?? I explained that force-push is useful on commits that you're not intending others to build on top of; I gave at least 5 common examples of why people push code despite it not being in a proper state to build on top of; I explained that rebasing on a gently-pushed commit is exactly the same as rebasing on a force-pushed commit; I explained how your teammates can force-push if you didn't somehow insist on saving the 5 seconds it would take you to communicate with them that you're going to build on top of their branch and maybe find out if you should be doing that in the first place (both of which you often should be doing anyway); I explained that if you took the few seconds to communicate then mistaken pushes would be rare and you could just resolve them by reverting or resolving commits like you normally would; I explained how git has specifically provided multiple features and documentation to support and explain both workflows because both of them have their own benefits and neither is superior... and yet somehow I "never explained anything" and "went straight from arguing about terminology to accusing me of dogmatism"?

Seriously? You don't feel even you're slightly misrepresenting things? I almost didn't even write this comment, but now I'm definitely done with this.