Re: Obscure error/warning/information message from git pull

[Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>]

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:

> Git does not record the branch on which a commit was made.  It's
> sometimes recorded in merges, but only in the free-text commit
> message.  For fast-forward merges (without a separate merge commit),
> there is no trace that development of certain commits happened on a
> separate branch.

And as an aside, it can sometimes be useful to preserve the information
that "these commits go together", even when git could just tack the
commits on to the end of the branch (which it will, when possible, by
default, i.e. a fast-forward merge).  To prevent that you can specify
"merge --no-ff", which will force git to create a merge commit.

So you'd end up with something like this (on, say master):

   * merge commit to add new thing (master)
   |\
   | * third bit of thing
   | |
   | * second bit of thing
   | |
   | * first bit of thing
   |/
   * last commit on master before merging new thing with --no-ff
   |

instead of this (without --no-ff):

   * third bit of thing (master)
   |
   * second bit of thing
   |
   * first bit of thing
   |
   * last commit on master before merging new thing with --no-ff
   |

-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org
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