Yes, it is possible. You must create a pre-commit hook which rejects commits to the master branch. Git doesn’t call a pre-commit hook when you call the merge command, so this hook will be rejecting only regular commits. Go to your repository. Create a file, .git/hooks/pre-commit, with the following content: #!/bin/sh branch=”$(git rev-parse –abbrev-ref HEAD)” … Read more
It’s really dependent on what you’re trying to do. My rule of thumb is that if the merge “means something” I use the –no-ff option. When the merge doesn’t really mean anything and you might have used a rebase there’s no reason to use –no-ff. The thing with git is that it’s a very powerful … Read more
The differences These options exists for separate purposes. Your repository ends up differently. Let’s suppose that your repository is like this after you are done developing on the topic branch: –squash If you checkout master and then git merge –squash topic; git commit -m topic, you get this: –no-ff –no-commit Instead, if you do git … Read more
Looks like GitHub does not support this – and this is a TERRIBLE affair. You basically CANNOT run an atomic, linear commit strategy (the best there is) using the GitHub UI. Note that Bitbucket DOES support this, and has much more fine-grained options for setting up the PR landing/integration strategy. Namely the ‘Rebase, fast-forward’ option which … Read more
It seems there is still a pending question in the thread: How to do it globally (i.e. for all branches) ? For the records, we can use the following: git config –add merge.ff false …to make it apply to all branches in the current repository. To make it apply to all branches in all repositories … Read more
Fast-forward merging makes sense for short-lived branches, but in a more complex history, non-fast-forward merging may make the history easier to understand, and make it easier to revert a group of commits. Warning: Non-fast-forwarding has potential side effects as well. Please review https://sandofsky.com/blog/git-workflow.html, avoid the ‘no-ff’ with its “checkpoint commits” that break bisect or blame, … Read more
The –no-ff flag prevents git merge from executing a “fast-forward” if it detects that your current HEAD is an ancestor of the commit you’re trying to merge. A fast-forward is when, instead of constructing a merge commit, git just moves your branch pointer to point at the incoming commit. This commonly occurs when doing a … Read more