合并后保留分支历史

Question

Sorry, Git beginner here. I have two branches, feature and first-feature . I do 10 commits in first-feature and then merge everything back over to feature . I am wondering, which of the following two scenarios is most common for a Git workflow or if one of them is even wrong?

A) Do the 10 commits of first-feature show up in the history of feature as well

or

B) feature has only a single commit which represents the new feature?

Any help is highly appreciated!

Answer 1

When merging two branches, git merge preserve all commits made to the merged branch, unless you use the squash flag . For example, if you have a feature branch and it has 3 commits when you merge that to the master , all of those commits will show on the master branch history and it will appear as if those commits were written on top of master branch all along.

Edit:

Preserving history has some pros to it:

• It allows you to preserve the commit history for any given feature while not worrying about overriding commits and changing history. It helps you avoid unnecessary git reverts or resets!
• Different features remain isolated and don't interfere with existing commit histories.
• Can help you re-integrate a completed feature branch.

On the other hand, if you value more a clean, linear history then git rebase or the squash flag may be most appropriate. You will avoid unnecessary commits and keep changes more centralized and linear!

Answer 2

Unless you specify explicitly, the commits will not be squashed.

So

git checkout feature
git merge first-feature
git push

will copy the individual commits

whereas

git checkout feature
git merge --squash first-feature
git push

will create a single merge commit.

In general squashing is recommended to keep the commit history clean.