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josh-sync/docs/adr/008-first-parent-ordering.md
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Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-02-14 21:28:40 +03:00

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# ADR-008: First-Parent Ordering in Reconciliation Merges
**Status:** Accepted
**Date:** 2026-02
## Context
Josh-proxy uses **first-parent traversal** when mapping subrepo history back to the monorepo. When you push a commit through josh-proxy, josh walks the first-parent chain to find a commit it can map to a monorepo commit. If the first parent leads to unmappable history, josh cannot reconstruct the monorepo-side branch correctly.
This became critical when the reconciliation merge (ADR-007) initially had the wrong parent order: old subrepo history as parent 1, josh-filtered as parent 2. Josh followed parent 1, couldn't find any mappable commit, and created a monorepo branch containing only the subrepo subfolder content — effectively deleting 1280 files from the rest of the monorepo.
## Decision
In reconciliation merge commits, the josh-filtered HEAD **must be parent 1** (first parent). The old subrepo HEAD is parent 2.
```bash
git commit-tree "$josh_tree" \
-p "$josh_head" \ # parent 1: josh-filtered — josh follows this
-p "$subrepo_head" \ # parent 2: old history — side branch, ignored by josh
-m "..."
```
### Why this is safe
- The old subrepo HEAD (`subrepo_head`) is still an ancestor of the merge commit regardless of parent order — push succeeds either way
- `--ancestry-path` in reverse sync still follows `B → M → C` regardless of parent order (it traces all paths, not just first-parent)
- Josh follows first-parent and finds the josh-filtered commit, which maps cleanly back to the monorepo
## Consequences
**Positive:**
- Josh can map the reconciliation merge back to the monorepo correctly
- Reverse sync through josh produces correct diffs (only subrepo-scoped changes)
- `git log --first-parent` on the subrepo shows the clean josh-filtered lineage
**Negative:**
- This is a subtle invariant — future changes to merge commit creation must preserve parent order
- The constraint is undocumented in josh-proxy's own documentation (discovered empirically)
- No automated test can verify this without a running josh-proxy instance
**Lesson learned:**
Parent order in `git commit-tree -p` is not cosmetic. For tools that rely on first-parent traversal (josh-proxy, `git log --first-parent`), parent 1 must be the "mainline" that the tool should follow.