Re: Decoding git show-branch output

From: Santi Béjar <sbejar@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 19, 2007, 14:13 UTC
Message-ID: <8aa486160701190613j6493daccofc259a8b17c0f1d1@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <17840.50115.999227.260259@lisa.zopyra.com>

On 1/19/07, Bill Lear <rael@zopyra.com> wrote:

[...]

> I'm very confused by the syntax above.  What does "[master^2^]" mean?
> Ditto with things like "[master~3^2^2]" and "[master~3^2~2]".

They explain the relation between commits:

^ -> first parent ^n -> n-th parent ~n -> <n>th generation parent, following only the first parent.

See the manual page of git-rev-parse (or the tutorial for some simple examples).

Show 9 quoted lines

>  Why is the order
>
> [master]
> [master^2]
> [master^2^]
> [master^]
>
> ?  I would have thought [master] would be followed by [master^], not
> [master^2].  Obviously I'm confused.

The order of the parents is not important.

Show 23 quoted lines

> I'm used to visual representations that show things in chronological order,
> from left to right, say as
>
>                                    H---I---J  second
>                                   /
>                          E---F---G---K---L  first
>                         /
>                        /       O---P---Q  third
>                       /       /
>          A---B---C---D---M---N  master
>
> or:
>
>                                    H---I---J  second
>                                   /         \
>                          E---F---G---K---L---R  first
>                         /                     \
>                        /       O---P---Q  third \
>                       /       /         \         \
>          A---B---C---D---M---N-----------S---------T  master
>
> (third merged onto master, second onto first, first onto master)
>

Then, use gitk to visualize the graph.

> Again, apologies if this is not the appropriate forum.

Your are welcome.

Santi