Re: Git help: amending a substandard commit message in savannah.

[David Kastrup]

Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello, John
>
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 11:42:49AM -0500, John Yates wrote:
>> > From: Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden>
>> > or would I be better just to abandon the branch and create another one?
>
>> My understanding is that if you never merge that tip with its sub-par
>> commit message into master then ultimately it will time out and get
>> garbage collected.  You could create a new branch just before the one
>> you wish to amend and push that new branch to Savannah.  (Under the
>> covers that is more or less what git amend does.)  From then on you
>> would work on that new branch, ultimately merging it into master.
>
> Presumably the timeout period is some system-wide setting, and it will
> be something like 3 months.

You can _delete_ the branch and push a "new" branch with the same name
right away.

I do that frequently for temporary branches in a repository that does
not allow forced rewrites.

The timeouts are for cleaning out commits that are no longer referenced
in a branch or tag.  Those commits remain accessible by commit id in the
repository for three months before they are cleaned out when they are
not accessible through a symbolic reference like an actual branch or
tag.

-- 
David Kastrup