Merging Branches - Git Recipes - page 214

Solution
Clone the repository from Recipe 6-1 with branches:
$ cd git-recipes
$ git clone-with-branches 06-01 06-02
$ cd 06-02
Right now you are on the master branch. Merge the feature branch into the
master branch with the $ git merge feature command. The command will
print the information that this operation was carried on as a fast-forward. When you
finish, the master branch contains all the files created in master branch as well as
three files from feature branch. The $ ls command will print six filenames:
f1.txt , f2.txt , f3.txt , m1.txt , m2.txt , and m3.txt .
How It Works
This recipe presents the simplest example of merging branches. There are two branches
master and feature , and the current branch is master . A very important fact is
that all the revisions in the master branch are contained in the feature branch. We
say that the master branch is merged into the feature branch. This relation was
defined in Recipe 5-9.
In settings such as in Figure 6-2 , the command $ git merge feature issued
in the master branch just moves the master pointer to the place referenced by the
feature branch. This operation is called fast-forward . It is the least complicated ex-
ample of joining two development histories. The resulting repository contains two
branches pointing to exactly the same commit. Notice that during fast-forward no new
commits are created.
Keep in mind that the history will contain no information at all that we used the $
git merge command. The name of the feature branch can disappear from the history.
This can be regarded as a drawback. We will circumvent this drawback in Recipe 6-6.
You also can try to merge the master branch into the feature branch. What
would happen in that case? Because the master branch is already merged into fea-
ture branch the commands: