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

[Andrew Suffield]

On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 10:48:28AM -0500, Michael Poole wrote:
> Adrian Irving-Beer writes:
> 
> > On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 09:19:12AM -0500, John S. Yates, Jr. wrote:
> > 
> > > I understand the model.  I understand the purity/simplicity/rigor
> > > arguments. But I also recognize that in the real world things are
> > > not nearly as clean as you all want to make it.
> > 
> > Actually, in the 'real world', things are even cleaner, since everyone
> > knows you can't go back to fix your mistakes, and there's no mailing
> > list to request that feature on. ;)
> > 
> > But of course you mean software management in the real world.  Do you
> > have examples of when this proposed undo functionality is required?
> > Examples where simply committing a reversal isn't sufficient?
> 
> One real-world example of needing that sort of operation was when bad
> RAM caused a corrupt patch to be committed on a project I maintain.
> (I think it was triggered by the pristine tree becoming corrupt; a
> diff inside the patch was incorrect.)  Trying to apply the patch to a
> correct tree made tla panic.  After some work, I did replace the patch
> with a correct version.
> 
> The now-fixed bug of renaming (and changing?)  an old file at the same
> time as creating a different file with the previous name could also
> generate a corrupt patch.  Since I did not know as much about the
> archive format when that bug bit me, I could not find a better way to
> fix it than to create a new archive.

Tag around the broken patch, so that it is no longer part of your
ancestry.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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