On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 03:01:24PM -0700, Jakub Narebski [off-list ref] wrote:
As a part of patch series introducing new fast-forward strategies
(--ff=never, --ff=only) there was patch which did merge reduction
before selecting merge strategy, by Sverre Hvammen Johansen
"[PATCH 4/5] Head reduction before selecting merge strategy"
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/80288/focus=80335
(I'm not sure if the link above is to nevest version of patch series).
Side note: builtin-merge does not have problem with merging 25+ refs
even in case every ref contains "new" commits.
The patch by Sverre Hvammen Johansen is useful if some of the refs has
no "new" commits, so it will help here, but I think it does not help in
all cases.