Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: [GNU-arch-dev] Re: how to fix a bad log message?

[Michael Poole]

Clark McGrew writes:

> On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 09:19 -0500, John S. Yates, Jr. wrote:
> 
> > To me that is a copout and a recipe for arch acquiring a bad reputation as
> > those increasingly less competent users actually attempt such exercises.
> > 
> > Even the most limited undo scheme could actually become a distinctive arch
> > capability, unmatched in most (all?) competing RCSs.
> 
> This is a bit of a kibitz, but I still don't understand *why* anybody
> would want to remove a change set.  Why do people want this feature?
> You can get exactly the same result in the source code by committing a
> "correction", and it doesn't have any of the bad side effects.  Isn't
> that enough?

There are cases where a patch is malformed in a way that violates the
repository format or invariants on the repository content; I mention a
few such cases from my own experience separately.

It is not hard to imagine a case where someone applies a patch in good
faith but later discovers that distributing it violates a third
party's copyrights.  To minimize the harm done and to avoid infringing
the copyright, it would be nice if the patch could be removed without
starting a new branch and replaying much of the previous one.

Michael Poole