Question

After invoking git merge --no-commit <commit>, performing a commit will result in a merge commit with two (or more) parents. What command to invoke to create a simple commit instead (without having to re-perform the merge command with the --squash option)?

Answer 1

According to the git-merge man page, the –squash option does not record $GIT_DIR/MERGE_HEAD. $GIT_DIR/MERGE_HEAD is responsible for creating merge commits; you can see this in the Git sources, file builtin/commit.c:


in_merge = file_exists(git_path("MERGE_HEAD"));
...
if (in_merge) {
... // Perform merge_commit
}


Solution: after having performed a normal merge, simply get rid of $GIT_DIR/MERGE_HEAD to avoid getting a merge commit. You may manually clean up $GIT_DIR/MERGE_MSG and $GIT_DIR/MERGE_MODE as well or leave this task up to Git upon successful commit.