Merging without changing the working directory

daniel_75761 0
Viewed 7090

I have the following scenario:

* ab82147 (HEAD, topic) changes
* 8993636 changes
* 82f4426 changes
* 18be5a3 (master) first

I'd like to merge (non fast-forward) topic into master. This requires me to:

  • git checkout master
  • git merge --no-ff topic

But checking out master, and then merging topic into it causes git to change my working directory (although the final result is identical to the one before checking out master), and the problem I have with that is due to the size of our project, it takes about 30 minutes to build it (with IncrediBuild) although nothing really changed and it's simply unbearable.

So what I would like to get is the following:

*   9075cf4 (HEAD, master) Merge branch 'topic'
|\  
| * ab82147 (topic) changes
| * 8993636 changes
| * 82f4426 changes
|/  
* 18be5a3 first

Without really touching the working directory (or at least cheating git somehow).

git
6 Answers

It is absolutely possible to do any merge, even non-fast forward merges, without git checkout, messing with the commit history, or clones. The secret is to add a second "worktree", so you effectively have a primary and secondary checkouts within the same repo.

cd local_repo
git worktree add _master_wt master
cd _master_wt
git pull origin master:master
git merge --no-ff -m "merging workbranch" my_work_branch
cd ..
git worktree remove _master_wt

You have now merged the local work branch to the local master branch without switching your checkout.

user_9294940

Simple, use these 3 steps:

  1. Merge master to topic: git merge origin/master
  2. Change head of master: git update-ref refs/heads/master refs/heads/topic

You can now go back in topic to pre merge commit: 3. git reset HEAD~

user_67008300
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