[HN Gopher] GitHub merges 'useless garbage' says Torvalds as new...
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       GitHub merges 'useless garbage' says Torvalds as new NTFS support
       added to Linux
        
       Author : cma
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2021-09-06 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
        
       | lloydatkinson wrote:
       | > Third, Paragon's repository has commit messages which lack
       | information, like "Merge branch 'torvalds:master' into master."
       | 
       | > Torvalds said that "Linux kernel merges need to be done
       | _properly_. " He added: "That means proper commit messages with
       | information about what is being merged and _why_ you merge
       | something. But it also means proper authorship and committer
       | information etc. All of which github entirely screws up. "
       | 
       | 100% agreed with this. On a related note I truly despair a little
       | when people insist on blanket "squash everything" workflows where
       | the source control UI defaults to (or has been configured to only
       | allow) squash merges.
       | 
       | It goes from one extreme of "removing wip and todo commits from
       | the history" to "remove commits almost entirely and lose all the
       | context". I'm guilty of the first one, but I could locally squash
       | to remove the messier commits but instead the nuclear option is
       | picked.
        
         | noptd wrote:
         | When squash merging, all commit messages are added to the
         | extended description in the editor, which makes it far easier
         | to remove useless comments and add in any necessary info as
         | needed. All of that context can then be viewed via git show and
         | other commands, while keeping the base branch's history linear
         | and readable in the process.
         | 
         | I don't see a problem with squash merging, especially as a
         | point of policy. It's been the best of both worlds in my
         | experience.
        
           | throwawaylinux wrote:
           | Which are the two worlds it is the best of?
           | 
           | Not the regular merge, because the best of that world is that
           | you have individual commits that you can reason about and
           | bisect.
           | 
           | Unless your branch history is full of junk, unfinished
           | commits, etc. But in that case the policy should be to not
           | publish such branches (or at least only publish them as WIP /
           | scratch branches which will get cleaned up properly and
           | rebased before upstream merge).
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-06 23:02 UTC)