How to use git-fmt-merge-msg?

From: Robert Haines <rhaines@manchester.ac.uk>
Date: Feb 5, 2009, 12:31 UTC
Message-ID: <84B3CCAA-A044-4517-B2C8-14D5DD754FD2@manchester.ac.uk>

Hi all,

I would like to use git-fmt-merge-msg to produce automatic summaries of what commits are being merged when I merge one branch into the other - like I see all the time in git.git, etc. The problem I am having is that I can only seem to get it to work with remote branches via .git/FETCH_HEAD - basically I don't know what else I can feed it to do what I want.

Say I have a local repo with no remotes so no .git/FETCH_HEAD. Can I use git-fmt-merge-msg to produce such a summary when I'm just merging local branches? I've tried feeding just about everything I can find in .git/ into it but with no luck. Is there anything generated during the merge that can be used as input if I do a merge --no-commit? A list of merged commits or something?

I'm sure I've missed something simple here... Alternatively, am I just barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks, Rob

-- 
Robert Haines

Research Associate, RealityGrid          Tel. : +44 (0)161 275 6067
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