Re: [Haskell-cafe] Darcs vs Git

Am 16.11.2015 um 19:32 schrieb Mike Meyer:

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 12:11 PM Joachim Durchholz wrote:

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Am 16.11.2015 um 18:36 schrieb Mike Meyer: I haven't seen you argue what purpose a full history might actually have, so I still can't say what value you see in the "full history" approach, but ah well - sometimes it's hard to verbalize such feelings,

Accuracy. Having watched the soviets change their history texts with each regime, it bothers me to see history changed.

I can understand the sentiment, but neither reasons nor consequences seem comparable. The Soviets edited history to falsify it. SCM history editing is to make it easier to understand, not to falsify it. Actually the work of any historian is a rewrite if you will.

If people actually read and/or otherwise examined these "carefully crafted change logs" on a regular basis, I might feel otherwise.

Believe me, they do. Been there, done that. Particularly to find out why underdocumented parts of the code were introduced, what parts of it were intentional and what parts accidental, and whom to ask about specific parts of the code. You really need to know that for any major clean-up in a code base that has become messy, as is inevitable over time. Having an extensive history of merge commits pushed that job from "hard" to "not doable" for me, and more than once. Regards, Jo