[0/3] FAQ entries for merges and modified files

Message

brian m. carlson Sept. 12, 2020, 8:48 p.m. UTC

This series introduces a few new FAQ entries on various topics.

The first describes why squash merging doesn't work for long-running
branches.  This is confusing for a lot of folks, including some pretty
advanced developers, so it seems worth documenting.

The second explains why reverts are not applied on merge if the change
has been cherry-picked to both sides.  We have documentation on this
already in git-merge(1), but here we also advise using a rebase instead.
I still see folks confused by this, so hopefully making it a little more
visible (with a little more explanation) will be helpful.

The third departs from the topic of merges to discuss modified files.  I
frequently see folks with perpetually modified files for one of two
reasons: case-sensitivity problems and problems where someone failed to
run the smudge or clean filter.  In fact, we saw one of those problems
recently on the list.  The FAQ entry explains how to handle both
situations and provides suggestions to prevent the former from happening
again.

I've answered all of these questions recently (some multiple times), so
I figured I'd document this so that folks can hopefully discover more of
this themselves and solve their problems more quickly.

brian m. carlson (3):
  docs: explain why squash merges are broken with long-running branches
  docs: explain why reverts are not always applied on merge
  docs: explain how to deal with files that are always modified

 Documentation/gitfaq.txt | 85 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 85 insertions(+)

Comments

Junio C Hamano Sept. 12, 2020, 9:48 p.m. UTC | #1

"brian m. carlson" <[e-mail]> writes:

> This series introduces a few new FAQ entries on various topics.

All look like topics worth covering.

Thanks.