# Two newbie question: "dead" branches and merging after cherry-pick. 3 messages from 2006-01-27 to 2006-01-27. Participants: Romano Giannetti, Alex Riesen, Junio C Hamano. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/3165 ## Romano Giannetti, 2006-01-27 17:36 Subject: Two newbie question: "dead" branches and merging after cherry-pick. Message-ID: <20060127173619.GA26199@pern.dea.icai.upcomillas.es> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20060127173619.GA26199%40pern.dea.icai.upcomillas.es ``` Hi, this is a "really-newbie-question"... git is the first SCM that I try to use, and I am really fascinated with it. I develop my software on three different PC and git solves all my problems of keeping uptodate with myself in a really nice way. I have a couple of doubts that probably are at the very silly level but... Here I go: - I use to work on a topic branch to make test, try solutions for bugs, etc. Say I am done with the branch "test-bill-idea". I decide it's a dead branch, so that I do not want to see it in day-by-day work (git branch, basically), but I do not want to loose it. If I delete the branch I will loose all its commit at the next prune, correct? There is a way to maintain it as a dead or hidden branch, shown for example just by gitk --all? If I tag the tip of the branch, and then delete .git/refs/head/test-bill-idea, will the "dead branch commits" be preserved by next prune(s)? - Easier: suppose I cheery-picked "abababab" from branch "testing" to master branch. What will happen if later I decide to merge all "testing" to master branch? I will have a merge conflict (trying to apply two times the same fix) or not? Thank you very much for your time! Have a nice week end, Romano -- Romano Giannetti - Univ. Pontificia Comillas (Madrid, Spain) Electronic Engineer - phone +34 915 422 800 ext 2416 fax +34 915 596 569 http://www.dea.icai.upcomillas.es/romano/ ``` ## Alex Riesen, 2006-01-27 19:47 Subject: Re: Two newbie question: "dead" branches and merging after cherry-pick. Message-ID: <20060127194730.GB6169@steel.home> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20060127194730.GB6169%40steel.home In-Reply-To: <20060127173619.GA26199@pern.dea.icai.upcomillas.es> ``` Romano Giannetti, Fri, Jan 27, 2006 18:36:19 +0100: > - I use to work on a topic branch to make test, try solutions for > bugs, etc. Say I am done with the branch "test-bill-idea". I decide > it's a dead branch, so that I do not want to see it in day-by-day > work (git branch, basically), but I do not want to loose it. If I > delete the branch I will loose all its commit at the next prune, > correct? There is a way to maintain it as a dead or hidden branch, > shown for example just by gitk --all? If I tag the tip of the > branch, and then delete .git/refs/head/test-bill-idea, will the > "dead branch commits" be preserved by next prune(s)? Yes, it will. You can actually move the reference file anywhere under .git/refs/, and "git prune" will never touch it and gitk will show it different color (looks grey to me). The tags are shown yellow, which can be associated with "dead for some time" already. > - Easier: suppose I cheery-picked "abababab" from branch "testing" > to master branch. What will happen if later I decide to merge > all "testing" to master branch? I will have a merge conflict (trying > to apply two times the same fix) or not? Yes, you probably will have to deal with a conflict (it can match the branch to be merged exactly, which is hardly a conflict). ``` ## Junio C Hamano, 2006-01-27 20:59 Subject: Re: Two newbie question: "dead" branches and merging after cherry-pick. Message-ID: <7vlkx11j5p.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7vlkx11j5p.fsf%40assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net In-Reply-To: <20060127173619.GA26199@pern.dea.icai.upcomillas.es> ``` Romano Giannetti writes: > - I use to work on a topic branch to make test, try solutions for > bugs, etc. Say I am done with the branch "test-bill-idea". I decide > it's a dead branch, so that I do not want to see it in day-by-day > work (git branch, basically), but I do not want to loose it. ... First let me make sure if I understand you correctly. You are done with what you did in the branch for now, but you have not merged the work to your day-to-day development "master" for some reason. In the meantime you would want to switch to other topic branches to work on other topics, and while working on them you do not want to "git branch" and "git show-branch" to show the topic you are done with but not merged yet. Later you would want to come back to it to do some interesting stuff with it (maybe finally merge into "master", or format-patch to send upstream). Is that what is happening here? If so, I would have chosen "postponed" not "dead" to describe the situation but you said "dead" and that is why I am wondering if I am getting you correctly. > ... If I > delete the branch I will loose all its commit at the next prune, > correct? ... Yes. If you do not have anything under .git/refs pointing at the tip of a development trail, that trail will be lost by the next prune. Even if you do not prune, it would be cumbersome to find it. "git lost-found" would find it for you but it still is cumbersome. > ... There is a way to maintain it as a dead or hidden branch, > shown for example just by gitk --all? If I tag the tip of the > branch, and then delete .git/refs/head/test-bill-idea, will the > "dead branch commits" be preserved by next prune(s)? Yes. You have the tag under .git/refs which points at the tip of that postponed branch head, so the development trail will not be lost. When you are done with other topics and would want to come back to that topic again, you could do this: $ git checkout -b test-bill-idea tag-bill-idea-postponed Until recently I used to have "jc/link" topic branch to play with "gitlink"-style subproject support suggested by Linus. It is not finished yet, and in the meantime I have suggested another way to do subproject support, which I've been spending more time on, in "jc/bind" topic branch. I have not abandoned "jc/link" topic completely, so I am not ready to do throw away that branch with "git branch -D jc/link" yet, but at the same time it clutters output from "git branch". So I did exactly what you outlined [*1*]: $ git tag hold/jc/gitlink jc/link ;# copy it to tags/ $ git branch -D jc/link ;# delete it from heads/ Now "git branch" would not show it, but "gitk --all" still would. > - Easier: suppose I cheery-picked "abababab" from branch "testing" > to master branch. What will happen if later I decide to merge > all "testing" to master branch? I will have a merge conflict (trying > to apply two times the same fix) or not? This is easy to experiment so I'd suggest you to try it and tell us what you see, like this: $ git checkout -b test-merge-throwaway master $ git cherry-pick abababab $ ... play with it, maybe making a couple of commits $ git pull . testing I would not be surprised if this resolves cleanly. If abababab is the only thing that touches the set of paths it touches, other than what are in "testing" and what you did since "testing" forked from "master", it is likely that the merge would resolve cleanly. Otherwise you would likely to see conflicts --- in which case you may want to suggest if/how we can reduce it. "cherry-pick" without -r drops a hint of which commit was picked in the commit log so it _might_ be a good idea to teach git to optionally take that information into account while doing the merge. I dunno. Once you are done experimenting, you can come back to master and delete the test-merge-throwaway branch: $ git checkout master $ git branch -D test-merge-throwaway [Footnote] *1* As my personal convention, each of my topic branches is named with two-letter name, '/', and a short topic word, and postponed tags have names starting with "hold/". Sticking to a convention makes it easy for me to do things like this: $ git show-branch --topo-order master "heads/??/*" ```