merging-parked-task-refs

name	merging-parked-task-refs
description	Use when adopting or discarding work parked by isolated task subagents on refs/omp/task/* - the cherry-pick recipe, the jj-colocated ordering law that prevents orphaned anonymous heads, and the post-batch sweep

Merging parked task refs

Each finished isolated subagent parks its commits on refs/omp/task/<id> and touches nothing else. You integrate every ref by hand.

The refs sit outside refs/heads/* so jj's import ignores them (deleting one can never make jj abandon commits). Price: jj cannot resolve them — use git plumbing only, and never point jj at a ref, since every jj call also snapshots the working copy.

git for-each-ref refs/omp/task                 # pending work; empty = nothing owed
git diff $(git merge-base HEAD <ref>)..<ref>   # review; worktree untouched
git cherry-pick $(git merge-base HEAD <ref>)..<ref>
git update-ref -d <ref>                        # after adoption OR rejection

Then review and test. Rejecting is just the delete, no adoption step.

• "empty cherry-pick": already an ancestor of HEAD → --skip, never --allow-empty.
• Conflict: --continue, or --abort and lift files via git show <ref>:<path>.
• Broken index: rm -f .git/index && git read-tree HEAD — derived state, jj and the worktree are untouched.
• Provenance not needed? git diff <range> | git apply -3 lands the same content without moving HEAD, which voids the ordering law below. Costs you the individual commits and the cherry-pick sequencer.

Ordering law — jj-colocated repos only

git cherry-pick moves HEAD behind jj's back; the next jj command re-parents a fresh working copy onto it and the old @ survives as a stale anonymous head whenever it was described or non-empty. Hence accumulated orphans (25 in one verified case), and descriptions written just before a pick landing on the orphan instead of @.

• Enter every batch with @ empty AND undescribed: jj describe -m "…" to close out prior work, then a plain jj new (no -m).
• NEVER jj describe / jj new -m immediately before a pick.
• Describe @ only AFTER the batch — and again after each later batch.
• Sweep: jj log -r 'heads(mutable()) ~ ::@ ~ bookmarks()' MUST be empty. jj abandon a listed head only once you confirm its content is already in @'s ancestry; otherwise LEAVE IT — more likely the user's live work than garbage. jj op restore recovers mistakes.

Plain-git repos: recipe unchanged, ordering law and sweep do not apply.