Re: [PATCH] Clarify documentation on the "ours" merge strategy.

From: Baz <brian.ewins@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 11, 2009, 15:13 UTC
Message-ID: <2faad3050911110713y4e33c7d2h21ad42efe4fd70b3@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <200911111411.nABEBfox031023@ds9.cixit.se>

2009/11/11 Peter Krefting <peter@softwolves.pp.se>:

Show 23 quoted lines

> Make it clear that the merge strategy will discard all changes made to
> the branch being merged, and not just avoid creating merge conflicts.
> ---
>  Documentation/merge-strategies.txt |    3 ++-
>  1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
>
>> If you want to use any merge strategy, you must understand what it does
>> first.
>
> Indeed. Perhaps this clarification will help the next poor soul that tries
> doing what I tried?
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/merge-strategies.txt b/Documentation/merge-strategies.txt
> index 4365b7e..a340dc9 100644
> --- a/Documentation/merge-strategies.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/merge-strategies.txt
> @@ -30,7 +30,8 @@ octopus::
>
>  ours::
>        This resolves any number of heads, but the result of the
> -       merge is always the current branch head.  It is meant to
> +       merge is always the current branch head, discarding any
> +       changes on the merged branch.  It is meant to

I think part of the problem is that it is unclear what the "current branch head" means when used in a rebase, and hence when this text is included in the help for git-rebase and git-pull. This flipped behaviour is surprising given the natural meaning of 'ours', or 'current branch', particularly for git pull:

git pull -s ours - discards changes in remote branch, keeps changes in current branch git pull --rebase -s ours - discards changes in current branch, keeps changes in remote branch

Perhaps something more in the way of an explicit warning?

ours::
         This resolves any number of heads, but the result of the
         merge is always the current branch head, discarding any
         changes on the merged branch.  It is meant to
         be used to supersede old development history of side
         branches. Note that when rebasing, the branch you are
         rebasing onto is the "current branch head", and using this
         strategy will lose all of your changes - unlikely to be what
         you wanted to do.

-Baz

Show 11 quoted lines

>        be used to supersede old development history of side
>        branches.
>
> --
> 1.6.4
>
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