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Why does git merge take the source branch rather than the destination branch as a parameter? The most common merge case by far for me is "Okay, this branch looks good, let's merge it into branch X...
#1: Initial revision
by
matthewsnyder
·
2023-08-08T16:53:03Z (9 months ago)
Why is git merge from rather than to?
Why does `git merge` take the source branch rather than the destination branch as a parameter? The most common merge case by far for me is "Okay, this branch looks good, let's merge it **into** branch X", where X is often something like `master`. Normally, if you're merging, you would expect that some new commits have arrived on the branch recently. If these came from `git commit`, then obviously you would have the source branch checked out already, which necessitates a clumsy checkout and merge. If these came from `git fetch`, then you would likewise want to checkout the source branch and see the changes first. I struggle to think of any use cases for merging *from*. Why was the merge command designed this way?