git-svn: recommend rebase for syncing against an SVN repo

Does this make sense to other git-svn users out there?

pull can give funky history unless you understand how git-svn works
internally, which users should not be expected to do.

Signed-off-by: Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>

diff --git a/Documentation/git-svn.txt b/Documentation/git-svn.txt
index 14bdef2939066625da2e8d2ca3c90601411aad4f..2fa5e94dbbea315a123275734757d46ad3267bd8 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/git-svn.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-svn.txt
@@ -235,12 +235,26 @@ Tracking and contributing to an Subversion managed-project:
        git-svn commit <tree-ish> [<tree-ish_2> ...]
 # Commit all the git commits from my-branch that don't exist in SVN:
        git-svn commit remotes/git-svn..my-branch
-# Something is committed to SVN, pull the latest into your branch:
-       git-svn fetch && git pull . remotes/git-svn
+# Something is committed to SVN, rebase the latest into your branch:
+       git-svn fetch && git rebase remotes/git-svn
 # Append svn:ignore settings to the default git exclude file:
        git-svn show-ignore >> .git/info/exclude
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
+REBASE VS. PULL
+---------------
+
+Originally, git-svn recommended that the remotes/git-svn branch be
+pulled from.  This is because the author favored 'git-svn commit B'
+to commit a single head rather than the 'git-svn commit A..B' notation
+to commit multiple commits.
+
+If you use 'git-svn commit A..B' to commit several diffs and you do not
+have the latest remotes/git-svn merged into my-branch, you should use
+'git rebase' to update your work branch instead of 'git pull'.  'pull'
+can cause non-linear history to be flattened when committing into SVN,
+which can lead to merge commits reversing previous commits in SVN.
+
 DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
 -----------------
 Merge tracking in Subversion is lacking and doing branched development
@@ -339,6 +353,10 @@ the possible corner cases (git doesn't do it, either).  Renamed and
 copied files are fully supported if they're similar enough for git to
 detect them.
 
+SEE ALSO
+--------
+gitlink:git-rebase[1]
+
 Author
 ------
 Written by Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>.