chiark / gitweb /
Terminology: Change "rewind" to "rewrite" where appropriate
In #928473, Colin Watson writes:
> the use of "rewind" as a synonym for "non-fast-forwarding", while
> somewhat common in git terminology, is unfortunate. The terms seem
> to be borrowed from video playback systems, where "rewind" is often
> just the exact opposite of "fast-forward", and so when I see
> "rewinding history" in a few places in dgit(1) my initial
> interpretation is that it must mean "updating a ref to point to an
> ancestor of the commit that it previously pointed to", whereas I
> think dgit(1) means "any push that isn't a fast-forward". I don't
> know if I'm the only one for whom it has that connotation.
This makes sense. So, I am changing uses of "rewind" which do not
mean precisely going back to an ancestor.
I think we can often use the word "rewrite" for the more general
case, but there are some places where another wording is better.
Signed-off-by: Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>