Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] Documentation/git-merge: explain --continue

On 22 August 2017 at 11:26, Michael J Gruber [off-list ref] wrote:

Martin Ågren venit, vidit, dixit 21.08.2017 18:43:

quoted

On 21 August 2017 at 14:53, Michael J Gruber [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Currently, 'git merge --continue' is mentioned but not explained.

Explain it.

Signed-off-by: Michael J Gruber <redacted>
---
 Documentation/git-merge.txt | 5 ++++-
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/git-merge.txt b/Documentation/git-merge.txt
index 6b308ab6d0..615e6bacde 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-merge.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-merge.txt

@@ -288,7 +288,10 @@ After seeing a conflict, you can do two things:

  * Resolve the conflicts.  Git will mark the conflicts in
    the working tree.  Edit the files into shape and
-   'git add' them to the index.  Use 'git commit' to seal the deal.
+   'git add' them to the index.  Use 'git commit' or
+   'git merge --continue' to seal the deal. The latter command
+   checks whether there is a (interrupted) merge in progress
+   before calling 'git commit'.

 You can work through the conflict with a number of tools:

There are actually two things going on here. First, this mentions git
merge --continue. Second, it explains what that command does. But the
latter is done earlier (not exactly like here, but still).

I didn't see that explained in the man page at all - on the contrary, I
only saw a forward reference (see section...), but then only an
explanation of what "resolving" means (including the "git commit"-step).
It is unclear to me from the man page which steps of "resolving" the
command "git merge --continue" does - you could think it does "git
commit -a", for example.

That's very true, and your change helps immensely. I thought that once
git merge --continue was mentioned, e.g.,

        Use 'git commit' or 'git merge --continue' to seal the deal.

or

        Use 'git commit' to conclude (you can also say 'git merge
        --continue').

then things are in some sense "complete". But you might be right that
further stressing that the latter is basically an alias helps avoid some
confusion. "Oh, great, so now I have two commands to choose from -- which
one should I be using?" :-)

Martin