Documentation: merge: add an overview
The reader unfamiliar with the concepts of branching and merging would have been completely lost. Try to help him with a diagram. Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>
Jonathan Nieder committed
Jan 23, 2010 at 03:42 UTC
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Documentation/git-merge.txt
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@@ -15,8 +15,32 @@ SYNOPSIS
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DESCRIPTION
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-----------
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-Merges the history specified by <commit> into HEAD, optionally using a
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-specific merge strategy.
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+Incorporates changes from the named commits (since the time their
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+histories diverged from the current branch) into the current
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+branch. This command is used by 'git pull' to incorporate changes
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+from another repository and can be used by hand to merge changes
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+from one branch into another.
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+
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+Assume the following history exists and the current branch is
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+"`master`":
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+
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+------------
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+ A---B---C topic
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+ /
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+ D---E---F---G master
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+------------
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+
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+Then "`git merge topic`" will replay the changes made on the
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+`topic` branch since it diverged from `master` (i.e., `E`) until
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+its current commit (`C`) on top of `master`, and record the result
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+in a new commit along with the names of the two parent commits and
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+a log message from the user describing the changes.
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+
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+------------
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+ A---B---C topic
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+ / \
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+ D---E---F---G---H master
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+------------
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The second syntax (<msg> `HEAD` <commit>...) is supported for
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historical reasons. Do not use it from the command line or in