[Haskell-cafe] Darcs vs Git

[Joachim Durchholz]

Am 16.11.2015 um 19:32 schrieb Mike Meyer:
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 12:11 PM Joachim Durchholz <jo at durchholz.org> wrote:
>
>> 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