I'm merging a hotfix branch into master. When I do a simple git merge hotfix-2.09 the merge fast-forwards but I'm getting a 'merge branch "hotfix-2.09"' commit in the log. hotfixes 01 - 08 did not do this. Am I doing something wrong with this merge or did the state of my master change some how?
edit I guess this is not really a fast forward but acting like it.
[webapps@Staging www]$ git merge hotfix-2.09
Auto-merging includes/processOrderFunctions.php
Merge made by recursive.
includes/processOrderFunctions.php | 38 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
processorderPL.php | 29 ++++++++++++++++++---------
2 files changed, 52 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-)
Are you sure it fast-forwarded? You wouldn't get a merge commit if it did.
By the sounds of it, you're merging multiple hot-fixes into a branch. I assume these hotfix branches were created from the same point in time (master) and are not cumulative? (i.e. they all branched from master, not hotfix-2 from hotfix-1 etc...).
Then the first branch merged would fast-forward, because the parent-ref of the commits would match up to master. When you merged your second branch, its parent-ref would be pointing to the original HEAD of master and not the new one. This means it can't be fast-forwarded, because it's not a linear path, and this would require a merge to "flatten" the trees.