I am trying to learn branching and merging in git. I thought that merging 2 branches automatically generates a merge commit and message (which I regard as a good thing). I DO want a commit and a commit message automatically generated, preferably with the ability to edit the commit message.
I made a “test” branch, deleted two non-critical files, commited, and then merged test back into master. I do not get a commit or a commit message for the merge; instead HEAD (on master) becomes the last commit from the test branch.
Am I doing something wrong? Is there a way of forcing it to automatically generate a commit with each merge, preferably allowing me to edit the commit message?
Thanks.
I’m guessing no files had to be merged when you merged the two branches. If the current state of a branch is just a series of commits based on the head of another branch, a so-called fast-forward merge is performed. See also here (at the very bottom), it’s explained better than I could do it