From: "Michael J Gruber" <g...@drmicha.warpmail.net>
Philip Oakley venit, vidit, dixit 19.09.2016 12:56:
A question came up on the Git user list regarding cherry-pick that got me
reading the manual (again), in this case regarding --no-walk ranges.
Essentially my question is: If --no-walk is given to rev-list (e.g. via
charry-pick), and the user includes a caret prefixed rev, when does that
range definition take effect on the command line, especially in light of
the --do-walk option?
In rev-list(1) there are only 8 references to 'range', with only
the --no-walk option saying "This has no effect if a range is specified."
but leaving open the decision as to what does (and does not) comprises
the
specification of a range on the cli.
The two and three dot notations are fairly obvious ranges from
gitrevisions(7) as they are complete strings, while the caret prefix is
an
implied range (it needs additional parameters to complete the range, and
there-in lies the issue).
It can be read that
$ git cherry-pick maint next
would pick two single commits, while
$ git cherry-pick maint next ^master
could implicitly be read as
$ git cherry-pick maint next --do-walk ^master
because the ^ caret starts the range that cancels the --no-walk.
Clearly that's not what is intended, which is
$ git cherry-pick --do-walk maint next ^master
but it is open to interpretation as to where in the command line the
caret
range prefix's --do-walk (to countermand the --no-walk) should applied.
If the user did want just the single commit at the tip of maint, and then
the range master..next, what would be their command line, and also, how
would the man page warn against false expectations?
Maybe:
Every negative rev (rev prefixed with ^, or a range) implies a
`--do-walk` (right at its position on the command line).
And then curb the misleading range sentence in the `--no-walk`
description.
At the moment the cherry-pick man page's example implies that --do-walk is
applied from the beginning, rather from the point given on the command line.
I had a very quick search of the *.c code for the options but didn't get any
further. Hopefully the user issue/misunderstanding is elsewhere... I'll add
this to my little list.
--
Philip
