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Re: Merging using only fast-forward

From
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date
Jan 18, 2008, 21:25 UTC
Message-ID
<7vodbibzch.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To
<402c10cd0801172258p9a1a97bt682fa012fcebd13c@mail.gmail.com>
"Sverre Hvammen Johansen" <hvammen@gmail.com> writes:
> I have been testing octopus merges and figured it is not very smart with
> respect to fast forward.

Octopus is designed to be simple and stupid. Its sole purpose is to bind more than two _independent_ development tracks, and by definition if they are totally independent, like A and B and C all forked from the current tip of our HEAD, it should make a new commit that is children of A and B and C. If B and C are not independent (e.g. C is a descendant of B), you should not be using Octopus to begin with.

The thing is, Octopus makes the bisection (not the internal processing of "git bisect", but the whole experience with "git bisect" which is measured by the number of commits you may have to test to find the one bad commit) less efficient, especially when the branches that are merged are not independent topics.

So keep it simple, and do not use Octopus if there is no justification other than "it looks cool" you can come up with.

I do not mind a patch to git-merge-octopus to discurage its use even more by detecting the casen where some of the merged branches are not independent and refusing to work, but that is a post 1.5.4 topic.

Previous: Sverre Hvammen JohansenNext: Sverre Hvammen Johansen
Message 8 of 15 in “Merging using only fast-forward”
  1. Sverre Hvammen JohansenJan 16, 2008
  2. Randal L. SchwartzJan 16, 2008
  3. Junio C HamanoJan 16, 2008
  4. Sverre Hvammen JohansenJan 16, 2008
  5. Junio C HamanoJan 16, 2008
  6. Sverre Hvammen JohansenJan 17, 2008
  7. Sverre Hvammen JohansenJan 18, 2008
  8. Junio C HamanoJan 18, 2008
  9. Sverre Hvammen JohansenJan 19, 2008
  10. Sverre Hvammen JohansenJan 19, 2008
  11. Junio C HamanoJan 19, 2008
  12. Sverre Hvammen JohansenJan 19, 2008
  13. Sverre Hvammen JohansenJan 21, 2008
  14. Sverre Hvammen JohansenJan 19, 2008
  15. Please don't reply to this threadSverre Hvammen Johansen, Jan 19, 2008

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