I/we need a lesson in git and/or gitlab and/or merge requests

[Hal Murray]

Merge requests seem reasonable if all goes well.  My work flow is roughly:
  download the patch  (URL plus ".patch")
  scan it
  maybe apply and test
  approve and merge

But things go downhill if I don't like something.  What I get from James is an 
update to the MR, a patch to the patch.  That makes reading/checking the patch 
harder and clutters up the git log.

What if I don't like the description of a patch?

Merge has an option to reduce all the patches to one.  But often that isn't 
appropriate.


git works so well for most things.  I think I/we are missing something in the 
workflow.


Should we be throwing away merges and making new ones rather than patching 
them?

How do I backup a bunch of commits that turned into a MR so I can make them 
better and try again?

I'm on a list or two where patches are distributed via email.  git has several 
commands for that.  Iterations usually have a v1 v2 ... as part of the 
Subject.  Often individual parts will be approved.  It's a lof of clutter in 
the email stream but the discussion gets archived in email rather than hidden 
over in a MR.

Is there a way in gitlab to approve only one of the patches rather than all of 
them?  I think I could do that by downloading the patch which is several email 
messages, editing out the one I want...  Again, if that was the right thing to 
be doing, I'd expect git to support it which it probably does if you use their 
email mode.



-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.