RE: The merge from hell...

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Feb 3, 2006, 05:45 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0602022139190.3462@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <F7DC2337C7631D4386A2DF6E8FB22B3005EFE7FF@hdsmsx401.amr.corp.intel.com>

On Thu, 2 Feb 2006, Brown, Len wrote:

> 
> I can do 16 next time, or 22, or none

Actually, you can't do 22:

	/*
	 * Having more than two parents is not strange at all, and this is
	 * how multi-way merges are represented.
	 */
	#define MAXPARENT (16)

(commit-tree.c).

Now, admittedly you should literally need no more than to change that #define and recompile, but at least by default, git-write-tree won't accept more than 16 parents.

The 12-way merge was a bit over the top, but it worked. I'd suggest not beign quite _that_ aggressive in the future, though, but it's not a big deal.

One thing I'd ask for: would it be possible to have more descriptive branch names than just numbers? Even if you want to track it by bugzilla entry number, how about calling it "bugzilla-12345" instead?

I can make the educated guess that it's the bugzilla.kernel.org tracking number, but still.. I think it would make the changelog more readable and understandable to outsiders.

		Linus