Re: git-merge: inconsistent manual page.
From: Junio C Hamano <hidden>
Date: 2016-06-15 22:43:45
Sergei Organov [off-list ref] writes:
git-merge has inconsistent manual page: 1. In the SYNOPSIS, there is [-m <msg>], but OPTIONS section lacks it. The latter has just description of <msg>, suggesting it could be used without -m, but SYNOPSIS doesn't reflect this.
This is not quite right, I am afraid. "git merge" used to take its parameters in quite an exotic order, and we still do support it as we do not break people's existing setups: git-merge "$message" HEAD $list_of_merged_refs where the second parameter is always HEAD. This is the only form that accepts the message without -m (see ll.230- in the git-merge script). But we do not _want_ to advertise this funny syntax. Humans and newly written scripts should express the above as: git merge -m "$message" $list_of_merged_refs
BTW, git-merge options are described in Documentation/merge-options.txt that is also used fot git-pull options, and it's not clear for me if git-pull supports [-m <msg>]. Does it?
It shouldn't; the merge message is prepared by git-pull to describe what got merged from where for you (see the last few lines in the git-pull script).
2. In the SYNOPSIS, there is no <head> that is described in the OPTIONS.
See above. We do not want to advertise the crazy syntax.