# git log: don't do merge diffs by default

1 messages from 2006-04-19 to 2006-04-19. Participants: Linus Torvalds.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/3921

## Linus Torvalds, 2006-04-19 17:20

Subject: git log: don't do merge diffs by default
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0604191015150.3701@g5.osdl.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/Pine.LNX.4.64.0604191015150.3701%40g5.osdl.org

```

I personally prefer "ignore_merges" to be on by default, because quite 
often the merge diff is distracting and not interesting. That's true both 
with "-p" and with "--stat" output.

If you want output from merges, you can trivially use the "-m", "-c" or 
"--cc" flags to tell that you're interested in merges, which also tells 
the diff generator what kind of diff to do (for --stat, any of the three 
will do, of course, but they differ for plain patches or for 
--patch-with-stat).

This trivial patch just removes the two lines that tells "git log" not to 
ignore merges. It will still show the commit log message, of course, due 
to the "always_show_header" part.

Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
---
diff --git a/git.c b/git.c
index 0be14bb..40b7e42 100644
--- a/git.c
+++ b/git.c
@@ -331,8 +331,6 @@ static int cmd_log(int argc, const char 
 	init_revisions(&rev);
 	rev.always_show_header = 1;
 	rev.diffopt.recursive = 1;
-	rev.combine_merges = 1;
-	rev.ignore_merges = 0;
 	return cmd_log_wc(argc, argv, envp, &rev);
 }
 

```