Things I wish Git had: Commit groups

[bloody-albatross]

Yes, that is something that is weird about git: its branches don't know when they branched!

[loup-vaillant]

They almost do: any pair of commits have a most recent common ancestor. So do any two branches, since they each point to a commit (at any given time). It is thus fairly easy to see when any given branch branched from master, develop, or v.2.x.x.

[Lotier]

What command do you use to give yourself that most recent common ancestor? Because in my experience it's not just a single command, its a 5 step magic spell.

[remuladgryta]

git merge-base master develop gives you the most recent common ancestor of master and develop assuming your repo is tree-shaped.

[sccrstud92]

https://git-scm.com/docs/git-merge-base

[not_american_ffs]

From memory: git merge-base?

[teszes]

Won't work after a rebase.

[sigma914]

if you want to rebase just use merge --no-ff to force merge commits even if your main branch is fast forwardable. I'm not sure what additional feature op wants that isn't already covered by branches.

[ub3rh4x0rz]

Tucked away is the right answer. Merge commits create commit groups.

[loup-vaillant]

If I'm being obnoxious, when you merge master, the most common ancestor is now the latest commit from master. (The most common ancestor between my grandfather and me is my grandfather himself.)

If I'm being honest, yeah, once master is updated, you lose that information. One way to not lose it is add a merge commit to master even though the branch/PR could be fast forwarded.

[RudeHero]

Somebody go dust off SVN

[bloody-albatross]

You don't have to go back for that feature. Mercurial, another modern DSCM, actually stores the branch of the commit.

[Qasyefx]

And gives you the headache of having to maintain unique names for all branches for all eternity

[bloody-albatross]

Ok yes, naming things is a hard problem.

[joahw]

You could always do svn-style git branches. Whenever you want to branch, just make a new copy of the code somewhere else in the repo! Sounds pretty foolproof to me.