Re: unexpected git-merge result

From: Dmitry Potapov <dpotapov@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 22, 2010, 05:44 UTC
Message-ID: <20100222054425.GC10191@dpotapov.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <loom.20100220T031401-572@post.gmane.org>

On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 03:45:09AM +0000, Dale Rowley wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> 
> You're exactly right. I overlooked the cherry-pick, which clears things up a
> bit. But the basic problem remains:
> 
> A----D---E---H
>  \          /
>   B--D'----G
> 
> G only removed a few of the lines that were brought over in the cherry-pick
> (D'), so it was surprising when they re-appeared in H. Intuitively, one would at
> least expect a conflict in H since D'+G is asserting that these lines should not
> exist, whereas D (on the other branch) is asserting that they should. I can see
> how it would be difficult to make git-merge account for this though, so maybe
> this is just a subtle gotcha when merging branches? Is there an easy way to
> avoid this gotcha?

git merge does 3-way merge, which means that it does not look at whole history but only on the current state and the merge base. So, if you look at changes between A and G then those lines were not touched, and A-E adds those lines, thus the end result is that these lines are added.

Dmitry