[gdpr-discuss] Git and the Right for Rectification

[Daniel Stone]

On Fri, 25 May 2018, 10:04 am Christoph Berg, <myon at debian.org> wrote:

> Re: Daniel Stone 2018-05-25 <
> CAPj87rOE9hkVkMknZoMNkp_zpKcKgXd868vULPV5vLV-MwT2wg at mail.gmail.com>
> > > Being only a basic Git user, I need your experience here: how practical
> > > is rebasing to remove a commit message or an e-mail address from a
> > > commit two years ago?
> > >
> >
> > Technically it's completely trivial and possible to automate.
> >
> > Everyone pulling the repository will have to deal with the result: they
> > will need to manually reconcile the new and old state via a rebase or
> > merge. This is something that's part of the workflow of some large
> > repositories.
> >
> > The result is somewhat more painful to work with, but that's a workflow
> and
> > policy issue rather than a technical one ...
>
> This is totally impractical. Suggesting that rebasing larger git
> repositories is feasible in practise is nonsense.
>

It causes a workflow issue. It's not technically impossible or an
insurmountable limitation of the tool.

Kernel development involves quite a deal of rebasing. There are good tools
to handle it. I do it constantly, and am happy to advise you if you're
stuck or confused about how rebase works, or how to handle it on the client
side.

It is possible to make an argument based on the assurance given by the
commit history etc etc, that a linear history is necessary for proper
operation and rewriting it is not an option. But this is absolutely not a
certainty that legal authorities will agree with your incredibly blunt
opinion.

>
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