Hi Norbert, On Fri, Mar 8, 2019 at 9:38 AM Norbert Nemec <norbert.ne...@microsoft.com> wrote: > > Thanks, Elijah, I had indeed missed that block about the ^0 handling. > > I still don't get why this awkward workaround is required. Why isn't that > lookup done by default? Performance can't be the reason, since the same > lookup is done lateron anyway, just as correctness check. The way I read the > documentation, providing no "from" should continue committing to a branch in > any case. I would never have seen the continuation of an incremental import a > "special case". There is a number of tools around that sync a git repo from > some other source and would regularly need to continue an existing branch. > > Greetings, > Norbert
If this "awkward workaround", as you put it, were removed it would make it impossible to create a commit with no parent without using a different branch name. I really like being able to export, modify, and re-import history, using something of the form: git fast-export --all | <edit the stream somehow> | git fast-import --force which would no longer work if fast-import automatically assumed a parent for every from-less commit in the input based on the reference name. Personally, I'm more on the side of not understanding why "from" isn't required whenever you want your commit to have a parent; users can specify either a sha or a mark-id easily enough; I don't see what it saves to allow omitting it, and it inevitably leads to other confusion like yours. But I'm well over a decade too late to advocate for that. Hope that helps, Elijah
