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authorThomas Ackermann <th.acker@arcor.de>2013-08-27 20:03:09 +0200
committerJunio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>2013-08-27 15:14:44 -0700
commite8e9964de489412aae2c9b8420d2fab8b00e9d12 (patch)
tree07bef4a754e37a08ed7c7da080bdf399a24346d1 /Documentation/user-manual.txt
parentdf47da758e6c7e76f9011f53df1cfdaf3443de1c (diff)
downloadgit-e8e9964de489412aae2c9b8420d2fab8b00e9d12.tar.gz
Improve section "Merging multiple trees"
Remove unnecessary quoting. Simplify description of three-way merge. Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Thomas Ackermann <th.acker@arcor.de> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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diff --git a/Documentation/user-manual.txt b/Documentation/user-manual.txt
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--- a/Documentation/user-manual.txt
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@@ -4004,27 +4004,26 @@ to see what the top commit was.
Merging multiple trees
----------------------
-Git helps you do a three-way merge, which you can expand to n-way by
-repeating the merge procedure arbitrary times until you finally
-"commit" the state. The normal situation is that you'd only do one
-three-way merge (two parents), and commit it, but if you like to, you
-can do multiple parents in one go.
+Git can help you perform a three-way merge, which can in turn be
+used for a many-way merge by repeating the merge procedure several
+times. The usual situation is that you only do one three-way merge
+(reconciling two lines of history) and commit the result, but if
+you like to, you can merge several branches in one go.
-To do a three-way merge, you need the two sets of "commit" objects
-that you want to merge, use those to find the closest common parent (a
-third "commit" object), and then use those commit objects to find the
-state of the directory ("tree" object) at these points.
+To perform a three-way merge, you start with the two commits you
+want to merge, find their closest common parent (a third commit),
+and compare the trees corresponding to these three commits.
-To get the "base" for the merge, you first look up the common parent
-of two commits with
+To get the "base" for the merge, look up the common parent of two
+commits:
-------------------------------------------------
$ git merge-base <commit1> <commit2>
-------------------------------------------------
-which will return you the commit they are both based on. You should
-now look up the "tree" objects of those commits, which you can easily
-do with (for example)
+This prints the name of a commit they are both based on. You should
+now look up the tree objects of those commits, which you can easily
+do with
-------------------------------------------------
$ git cat-file commit <commitname> | head -1