On Tue, Feb 3, 2026, at 23:48, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Justin Tobler [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Complex merge events may produce an octopus merge where the resulting
merge commit has more than two parents. While iterating through objects
in the repository for git-repo-structure, identify the commit with the
most parents and display it in the output.

Does the size of octopus have anything more than a curiosity value?

I’m guessing this stat is inspired by git-sizer.[1][2] This is all that
the project says about “octopus”:

    * Are there other bizarre and questionable things in your repository?

        * Annotated tags pointing at one another in long chains?
        * Octopus merges with dozens of parents?
        * Commits with gigantic log messages?

It marks the max of 10 in this repo as a “one star” (*) concern
(lowest). The 66 parent commit in the Linux Kernel gets six stars.

By the way: why did this project stop doing 3+ parent merges?

🔗 1: https://lore.kernel.org/git/20251021182601.2687284-5-jltobler@gmail.com/ (local)
🔗 2: https://github.com/github/git-sizer

The opposite, the commit with most direct children, might be even
more interesting, but that may be just me.