I've hit this issue in scripts where someone has written
if ! git merge some-branch --no-commit; then
# deal or have the user deal
fi
git commit -m '...'
intending that if the merge succeeds it has left the changes from
some-branch uncommitted. And the script works, until for some reason
some-branch is on top of HEAD. So Tomas is not the only person who
was surprised or confused by the present behavior. =)
In this case the workaround is to add --no-ff to the command, which is
effectively what the proposed change would do automatically.
Suppose we were to make such a change in 1.7.0 or a later version.
What would the transition plan need to accomplish? For instance,
we could print a warning every time 'merge --no-commit' does a
fast-forward, and make the change in a later version -- might that suffice?
Cheers,
Greg
PS - Here's one version of a documentation patch for #3.
>From 83282bbbd0c918016e71e4ff6fd8a823315fed0e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Greg Price <price@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:34:19 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] Document behavior of --no-commit on fast forward.
This behavior can be surprising, so document it.
Signed-off-by: Greg Price <price@xxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/merge-options.txt | 5 ++++-
1 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/merge-options.txt
b/Documentation/merge-options.txt
index adadf8e..6015e5d 100644
--- a/Documentation/merge-options.txt
+++ b/Documentation/merge-options.txt
@@ -31,7 +31,10 @@
--no-commit::
Perform the merge but pretend the merge failed and do
not autocommit, to give the user a chance to inspect and
- further tweak the merge result before committing.
+ further tweak the merge result before committing. If the
+ merge resolved as a fast-forward, the branch pointer will
+ be updated as usual; --no-ff can be combined with this
+ option to always preserve the branch pointer.
--commit::
Perform the merge and commit the result. This option can
--
1.6.3.1.499.ge7b8da
--
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