Re: [PATCH] merge: --ff-one-only to apply FF if commit is one

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <code@khaugsbakk.name>
Date: Oct 25, 2023, 16:27 UTC
Message-ID: <da246287-8530-4680-8fcc-f68f881bc24b@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <pull.1599.git.git.1698224280816.gitgitgadget@gmail.com>

Hi

On Wed, Oct 25, 2023, at 10:58, Ruslan Yakauleu via GitGitGadget wrote:

> A new option --ff-one-only to control the merging strategy.
> For one commit option works like -ff to avoid extra merge commit.
> In other cases the option works like --no-ff to create merge commit for
> complex features.

I do something similar for my pull requests:

- If more than one commit: `--no-ff`
- One commit: rebase/squash

Your change would (according to the commit message) only *not* create a merge if it so happens to be the case that you can fast-forward the branch. So it would create a merge commit if (say) your branch was three commits behind and one ahead (your commit) of the target branch. But isn’t it fine to just rebase/squash in this case? That seems more general.

(Maybe `--squash-one-only`.)

But it seems that your new option would work nicely with “semi-linear” merges:[1]

- Rebase on the target branch
- `--ff-one-only`
- Now you either get:
  - a “semi-linear merge”; or
  - a single commit (as opposed to a merge which joins together a branch
    which is 0 behind and 1 ahead of the target branch)

-- 
Kristoffer