How to merge into my working copy?

How to merge into my working copy?

[Patrick Doyle]

I would like to pull a set of changes from a branch back into the
working copy of my current branch without affecting the index.  I
can't figure out the right combination of --commit, --no-commit, -ff,
-no-ff, --log, --no-log, --squash, --no-squash, etc... options to use
with git-merge.

Basically, I created a branch off my mainline branch a few days ago.
Made some commits on that branch.  Then went back to my mainline
branch, made a few commits there, and now I would like to make my
working copy look like a merge of its current state with the changes
from the branch, minus any associated commits.

I probably should have just used git-stash to tuck those changes away,
but I didn't.

--wpd

Re: How to merge into my working copy?

[Bruce Stephens]

Patrick Doyle <wpdster@gmail.com> writes:

[...]

> Basically, I created a branch off my mainline branch a few days ago.
> Made some commits on that branch.  Then went back to my mainline
> branch, made a few commits there, and now I would like to make my
> working copy look like a merge of its current state with the changes
> from the branch, minus any associated commits.
>
> I probably should have just used git-stash to tuck those changes away,
> but I didn't.

Rather than spending time worrying about optimal ways to do this,
wouldn't it work just to do merge (to get the right tree) followed by
rebase -i to get the commits in the way you want (removing the merge,
anyway)?

[...]

Re: How to merge into my working copy?

[Junio C Hamano]

Patrick Doyle <wpdster@gmail.com> writes:

> I would like to pull a set of changes from a branch back into the
> working copy of my current branch without affecting the index.  I
> can't figure out the right combination of --commit, --no-commit, -ff,
> -no-ff, --log, --no-log, --squash, --no-squash, etc... options to use
> with git-merge.
>
> Basically, I created a branch off my mainline branch a few days ago.
> Made some commits on that branch.  Then went back to my mainline
> branch, made a few commits there, and now I would like to make my
> working copy look like a merge of its current state with the changes
> from the branch, minus any associated commits.

If you do not have to have your extra "without affecting the index"
constraint (which I do not see a sensible reason to want to, by the way),
you can "merge --no-commit that_branch", I think.

Re: How to merge into my working copy?

[Patrick Doyle]

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 12:53 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> If you do not have to have your extra "without affecting the index"
> constraint (which I do not see a sensible reason to want to, by the way),
> you can "merge --no-commit that_branch", I think.
>

After bouncing this around a couple of times with Bruce Stephens, and
only now noticing that I hit "Reply" instead of "Reply-All"... sigh),
I realized that what I wanted was:

$ git merge --squash that_branch
$ git reset

I only wanted to affect my working copy, editing and adding things to
the index (which I think of as "staging area for my next commit") as I
was ready.

--wpd