From: Justin Tobler Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:06:45 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/5] builtin/repo: find commit with most parents Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On 26/02/04 12:14AM, Kristoffer Haugsbakk wrote: > On Tue, Feb 3, 2026, at 23:48, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > Justin Tobler writes: > > > >> Complex merge events may produce an octopus merge where the resulting > >> merge commit has more than two parents. While iterating through objects > >> in the repository for git-repo-structure, identify the commit with the > >> most parents and display it in the output. > > > > Does the size of octopus have anything more than a curiosity value? > > I’m guessing this stat is inspired by git-sizer.[1][2] This is all that > the project says about “octopus”: > > * Are there other bizarre and questionable things in your repository? > > * Annotated tags pointing at one another in long chains? > * Octopus merges with dozens of parents? > * Commits with gigantic log messages? > > It marks the max of 10 in this repo as a “one star” (*) concern > (lowest). The 66 parent commit in the Linux Kernel gets six stars. Yup, this is taken from git-sizer. From my perspective the max parents value largely just provides additional insight into how the repository may have been used/structured. -Justin