# Puzzled by gitk patch representation for merge commits 2 messages from 2008-07-04 to 2008-07-04. Participants: Jerome Lovy, Jonathan Nieder. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/14286 ## Jerome Lovy, 2008-07-04 09:14 Subject: Puzzled by gitk patch representation for merge commits Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/g4kpmu%249ga%241%40ger.gmane.org ``` Hello, I don't understand the graphical scheme that gitk uses when displaying patches for merge commits. I would like to be able to explain this to the people I'm trying to evangelize to git, because they are also puzzled when they try to check with gitk what a merge has done to a given file. I can see that at least three graphical hints seem to be involved: - font: regular/bold - color: red/blue (maybe there are more colors when the commit has more than two parents?) - column for displaying the '+' or '-' But I just don't see what is the respective semantics of these hints... (I'm using git 1.5.5.1 if that matters.) Thanks in advance, Jérôme ``` ## Jonathan Nieder, 2008-07-04 17:51 Subject: Re: Puzzled by gitk patch representation for merge commits Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/Pine.GSO.4.62.0807041240110.19792%40harper.uchicago.edu In-Reply-To: ``` Hi Jérôme, Jerome Lovy wrote: > I don't understand the graphical scheme that gitk uses when displaying > patches for merge commits. I would like to be able to explain this to the > people I'm trying to evangelize to git, because they are also puzzled when > they try to check with gitk what a merge has done to a given file. > > I can see that at least three graphical hints seem to be involved: > - font: regular/bold > - color: red/blue > (maybe there are more colors when the commit has more than two parents?) > - column for displaying the '+' or '-' All of the information is there in the text; the color and font are just supposed to make it easier to see. As for the diff text itself, I didn't remember what it meant myself, so I looked it up. It seems the diff format shown is that produced by 'git-diff --cc', which makes a "compact combined diff". It only shows conflicting changes. Each column on the left represents the changes from a different parent. Hope that helps, Jonathan ```