FAQ: wip

Documentation/FAQ.md

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+# Frequently Answered Questions
+
+## Table of Contents
+
+  * [Why did `git-filter-repo` rewrite commit hashes?](#why-did-git-filter-repo-rewrite-commit-hashes)
+  * [Why did `git-filter-repo` rewrite more commit hashes than I expected?](#why-did-git-filter-repo-rewrite-more-commit-hashes-than-i-expected)
+  * [Why did `git-filter-repo` rewrite other branches too?](#why-did-git-filter-repo-rewrite-other-branches-too)
+  * [Help! Can I recover or undo the filtering?](#help-can-i-recover-or-undo-the-filtering)
+  * [Can you change `git-filter-repo` to allow future folks to recover from `--force`'d rewrites?](#can-you-change-git-filter-repo-to-allow-future-folks-to-recover-from---forced-rewrites)
+  * [Can I use `git-filter-repo` to fix a repository with corruption?](#Can-I-use-git-filter-repo-to-fix-a-repository-with-corruption)
+  * [What kinds of problems does `git-filter-repo` not try to solve?](#What-kinds-of-problems-does-git-filter-repo-not-try-to-solve)
+
+
+## Why did `git-filter-repo` rewrite commit hashes?
+
+This is fundamental to how Git operates.  In more detail...
+
+Each commit in Git is a hash of its contents.  Those contents include
+the commit message, the author (name, email, and time authored), the
+committer (name, email and time committed), the toplevel tree hash,
+and the parent(s) of the commit.  This means that if any of the commit
+fields change, including the tree hash or the hash of the parent(s) of
+the commit, then the hash for the commit will change.
+
+(The same is true for files ("blobs") and trees stored in git as well;
+each is a hash of its contents, so literally if anything changes, the
+commit hash will change.)
+
+If you attempt to write commit (or tree or blob) objects with an
+incorrect hash, Git will reject it as corrupt.
+
+## Why did `git-filter-repo` rewrite more commit hashes than I expected?
+
+There are two aspects to this, or two possible underlying questions users
+might be asking here:
+  * Why did commits newer than the ones I expected have their hash change?
+  * Why did commits older than the ones I expected have their hash change?
+
+For the first question, see [why filter-repo rewrites commit
+hashes](#why-did-git-filter-repo-rewrite-commit-hashes), and note that
+if you modify some old commit, perhaps to remove a file, then obviously
+that commit's hash must change.  Further, since that commit will have a
+new hash, any other commit with that commit as a parent will need to
+have a new hash.  That will need to chain all the way to the most recent
+commits in history.  This is fundamental to Git and there is nothing you
+can do to change this.
+
+For the second question, there are two causes: (1) the filter you
+specified applies to the older commits too, or (2) git-fast-export and
+git-fast-import (both of which git-filter-repo uses) canonicalize
+history in various ways.  The second cause means that even if you have
+no filter, these tools sometimes change commit hashes.  This can happen
+in any of these cases:
+
+  * If you have signed commits, the signatures will be stripped
+  * If you have commits with extended headers, the extended headers will
+    be stripped (signed commits are actually a special case of this)
+  * If you have commits in an encoding other than UTF-8, they will by
+    default be re-encoded into UTF-8
+  * If you have a commit without an author, one will be added that
+    matches the committer.
+  * If you have trees that are not canonical (e.g. incorrect sorting
+    order), they will be canonicalized
+
+If this affects you and you really only want to rewrite newer commits in
+history, you can use the `--refs` argument to git-filter-repo to specify
+a range of history that you want rewritten.
+
+(For those attempting to be clever and use `--refs` for the first
+question: Note that if you attempt to only rewrite a few old commits,
+then all you'll succeed in is adding new commits that won't be part of
+any branch and will be subject to garbage collection.  The branches will
+still hold on to the unrewritten versions of the commits.  Thus, you
+have to rewrite all the way to the branch tip for the rewrite to be
+meaningful.  Said another way, the `--refs` trick is only useful for
+restricting the rewrite to newer commits, never for restricting the
+rewrite to older commits.)
+
+## Why did `git-filter-repo` rewrite other branches too?
+
+git-filter-repo's name is git-filter-**_repo_**.  Obviously it is going
+to rewrite all branches by default.
+
+`git-filter-repo` can restrict its rewriting to a subset of history,
+such as a single branch, using the `--refs` option.  However, using that
+comes with the risk that one branch now has a different version of some
+commits than other branches do; usually, when you rewrite history, you
+want all branches that depend on what you are rewriting to be updated.
+
+## Help! Can I recover or undo the filtering?
+
+Sure, _if_ you followed the instructions.  The instructions told you to
+make a fresh clone before running git-filter-repo.  If you did that, you
+can just throw away your clone with the flubbed rewrite, and make a new
+clone.
+
+If you didn't make a fresh clone, and you didn't run with `--force`, you
+would have seen the following warning:
+```
+Aborting: Refusing to destructively overwrite repo history since
+this does not look like a fresh clone.
+[...]
+Please operate on a fresh clone instead.  If you want to proceed
+anyway, use --force.
+```
+If you then added `--force`, well, you were warned.
+
+If you didn't make a fresh clone, and you started with `--force`, and you
+didn't think to read the description of the `--force` option:
+```
+	Ignore fresh clone checks and rewrite history (an irreversible
+	operation, especially since it by default ends with an
+	immediate pruning of reflogs and old objects).
+```
+and you didn't read even the beginning of the manual
+```
+git-filter-repo destructively rewrites history
+```
+and you think it's okay to run a command with `--force` in it on something
+you don't have a backup of, then now is the time to reasses your life
+choices.  `--force` should be a pretty clear warning sign.  (If someone
+on the internet suggested `--force`, you should complain at them very
+loudly, especially if it was on Stack Overflow or some similar site.  And
+you should also learn to carefully vet commands suggested by others on the
+internet.)
+
+See also the next question.
+
+## Can you change `git-filter-repo` to allow future folks to recover from --force'd rewrites?
+
+This will never be supported.
+
+* Providing an alternate method to restore would require storing both
+  the original history and the new history, meaning that those who are
+  trying to shrink their repository size instead see it grow and have to
+  figure out extra steps to expunge the old history to see the actual
+  size savings.  Experience showed with other tools that this was
+  frustrating and difficult to figure out for many users.  Providing an
+  alternate method to restore would mean that users who are trying to
+  purge sensitive data from their repository still find the sensitive
+  data after the rewrite because it hasn't actually been purged. In
+  order to actually purge it, they have to take extra steps, which again
+  has made things difficult for users in the past with other tools.
+
+* Providing an alternate method to restore would also mean trying to
+  figure out what should be backed up and how. The obvious choices used
+  by previous tools only actually provided partial backups (reflogs
+  would be ignored for example, as would uncommitted changes whether
+  staged or not). The only reasonable full backup mechanism is making a
+  separate clone, which is both expensive and something the user can and
+  should understand how to do on their own.
+
+* Providing an alternate method to restore would also mean providing
+  documentation on how to restore. Past methods by other tools in the
+  history rewriting space suggested that it was rather difficult for
+  users to figure out.  Difficult enough, in fact, that users simply
+  didn't ever use them.  They instead made a separate clone before
+  rewriting history and if they didn't like the rewrite, then they just
+  blew it away and made a new clone to work with.  Since that was
+  observed to be the easy restoration method, I simply enforced it with
+  this tool, requiring users who look like they might not be operating
+  on a fresh clone to use the --force flag.
+
+But more than all that, if there were an alternate method to restore,
+why would you have needed to specify the --force flag? Doesn't its
+existence (and the wording of its documentation) make it pretty clear on
+its own that there isn't going to be a way to restore?
+
+## Can I use `git-filter-repo` to fix a repository with corruption?
+
+Some kinds, in conjunction with `git replace`.  If `git fsck` reports
+warnings/errors for certain objects, you can often [replace them and
+rewrite
+history](examples-from-user-filed-issues.md#Handling-repository-corruption).
+
+## What kinds of problems does `git-filter-repo` not try to solve?
+
+  * Filtering history but magically keeping the same commit IDs
+  * Bidirectional development between filtered and unfiltered repository (josh)
+  * Filtering based on the difference (a.k.a. patch or change) between commits (rebase)
+  * Conversion between different version control systems (reposurgeon)
+  * Having two people filter their clone of the repository (with the same
+    filtering command) and getting the same new commit IDs
+
+<!--
+## How do I see what was removed?
+
+  * Give answer in terms of `git rev-list --objects --all` in both a
+    separate fresh clone from before the rewrite and in the repo where
+    the rewrite was done.  Then find the objects that exist in the old
+    but not the new.
+-->