D Programming Language source (dmd, phobos, etc.) has moved to github

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg at gmx.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.950.1296005459.4748.digitalmars-d-announce at puremagic.com...
> On Tuesday, January 25, 2011 16:50:03 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "Ulrik Mikaelsson" <ulrik.mikaelsson at gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:mailman.949.1295999711.4748.digitalmars-d-announce at puremagic.com...
>>
>> > Again, version-number + repo is not 100% when history-rewrite is
>> > possible.
>>
>> "History-rewrite" is new to me. Does that just mean branching off from a
>> past revision? If not, do you have a link that explains it?
>
> You can do stuff like re-order and squash commits. Look at the man page 
> for git-
> rebase.
>

Ok, I just took a look at it here:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-rebase.html

Maybe it's just my inexperience with DVCSes, but everything in there seems 
like the sort of thing I would consider much better off accomplished by just 
simply creating a new branch that re-applies changesets from an existing 
branch (or in most cases of removing changesets, committing a new changeset 
that undoes the undesired ones) instead of screwing around with the history. 
And if some joker's been spamming a repo with a bunch of garbage commits, 
then ok, maybe have something to delete that old junk branch. But aside from 
that sort of special case, I don't see what good can come from encouraging 
removal of the old branch versus just simply adding a new one or committing 
an "undo" changeset. In other words, history-rewriting seems to trade in the 
reliability of a stable history for...apperently some benefit that I'm 
having trouble seeing (Just so that you can? I kinda doubt that would be the 
reason though, especially if Torvalds is heavily involved.)

Ulrick mentioned that history rewriting is "encouraged under some particular 
circumstances". What circumstances would those be?