Re: [PATCH] Fix incorrect wording in git-merge.txt.

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
Date: Mar 3, 2008, 18:26 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.00.0803031320180.2899@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <1204564483-5260-1-git-send-email-Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr>

On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, Matthieu Moy wrote:

Show 20 quoted lines

> A merge is not necessarily with a remote branch, it can be with any
> commit object.
> ---
>  Documentation/git-merge.txt |    3 ++-
>  1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/Documentation/git-merge.txt b/Documentation/git-merge.txt
> index 0c9ad7f..193c9c0 100644
> --- a/Documentation/git-merge.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/git-merge.txt
> @@ -68,7 +68,8 @@ HOW MERGE WORKS
>  ---------------
>  
>  A merge is always between the current `HEAD` and one or more
> -remote branch heads, and the index file must exactly match the
> +commit objects (usually, branch head or tag), and the index file must
> +exactly match the
>  tree of `HEAD` commit (i.e. the contents of the last commit) when
>  it happens.  In other words, `git-diff --cached HEAD` must
>  report no changes.

I don't like this wording. Using "object" here wouldn't help avoiding Paolo's confusion at all.

You don't really merge a commit _object_. You merge with one or more other commits, tipycally identified by a branch name or a tag.

Nicolas