Date:   Fri, 3 Mar 2023 13:48:44 -0500
From:   "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
To:     Nick Terrell <terrelln@meta.com>
Cc:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Nick Terrell <nickrterrell@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] zstd changes for v6.3-rc1
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On Fri, Mar 03, 2023 at 06:03:50PM +0000, Nick Terrell wrote:
> 
> What do you prefer I do with my current tree? I guess I can either:
> - Leave the merges in and keep a stable tree
> - Fix up my tree and clean up the merges, but break the stable tree

Do you have any downstream trees that depend on your tree?  If you
don't anyone who might be using your tree as a base for forther work
(linux-next doesn't count, since it rewinds every working day).

In general, for most "leaf" trees, rewinding your branches is not a
big deal.  There are some people who worship at the altar of "stable
git branches which never be rewound, forever and ever, Amen".  But
that is really a religious belief, and it's one that I don't subscribe
to.

Sure, if someone is depending on your git tree then rewinding the
branch can cause them problems.  But not all subsystem trees are used
by others as a basis for further work!  There are benefits to
rewinding / rebasing patches; sometimes I'll do rewind the ext4 dev
branch to add a "Tested-By", or to drop a patch which I had merged,
but then later on I discovered that it causes regressions.  In that
case, I'll drop the patch using git rebase -i since it can make life
easier who are doing git bisects.

Cheers,

					- Ted