Hi Elijah, Elijah Newren <newren@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > Hi Roland, > > On Tue, Jul 9, 2019 at 9:17 AM Roland Jäger <eyenseo@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> Thanks for answering Junio. >> >> I get what git does. But I believe that either the documentation ist >> wrong/ambiguous or --no-ff and --ff-only should be able to be >> combined and either should be fixed - preferably the later. What I >> want to say to git is "I never accept a real merge; please make a >> merge commit, even if it is redundant/empty". And I believe that >> github and gitlab allow to configure something like that. > > Please don't top-post on this list. > > I agree, the documentation is wrong or misleading and there is a > wording change we could make to improve it. But, in particular, > --no-ff and -ff-only are completely incompatible. They currently are compatible, but in a weird manner, see below. I'd prefer they were perfectly compatible and orthogonal, as using both would be the safe way to create cleanest possible merge -- the one that introduces on the mainline the /exact/ changes made on side-branch: --ff-only: tells git to refuse operation (actual merge) if FF is impossible, that for this particular use-case would ensure the merge, when actually created, is the "cleanest possible" one and then --no-ff: forces git to create actual (cleanest possible) merge commit, that otherwise it wouldn't, as it defaults to --ff, and --ff-only above ensures FF is possible. Right now (in my git 2.10) it seems these options somehow cancel each other, that is both useless and surprising: When FF is possible: $ git merge --ff-only --no-ff side_branch Merge made by the 'recursive' strategy. [...] Good! $ git reset --hard HEAD~1 [...] $ git merge --no-ff --ff-only side_branch Updating eafaed6..b83db07 Fast-forward [...] ??? I said --no-ff: how comes you did fast-forward?! When FF is impossible: $ git merge --ff-only --no-ff side_branch Merge made by the 'recursive' strategy. [...] ??? I said --ff-only: how comes you didn't bail out?! $ git reset --hard HEAD~1 [...] $ git merge --no-ff --ff-only side_branch fatal: Not possible to fast-forward, aborting. Good! -- Sergey git version 2.10.0.1.g57b01a3
