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I wanted to learn (some of) the details of git when merging, cherry-picking or rebasing.

With the help of this Makefile I could easily switch to different test situations and analyze the outcome.

How to use

Start with make initial to delete artefacts from former runs and initialize a git repo.

make prep creates a couple of commits including a branch "B". This is the starting point for different experiments.

From the starting point you can try one of the other make targets like, make merge, make cherry-pick*, etc.

Hint 1: To avoid merge conflicts every commit consists one one new file.

Hint 2: Pay attention. When you clone this repo then copy Makefile to another empty directory. Otherwise your cloned .git directory will be overwritten.

Inspect the results

A graphical git client eases the inspections of the results, but textual command line output suffices in the worst case. Use e.g. git log, git status, etc.

To visualize relations and branches you can put something like

[alias]
    lg1 = log --graph --abbrev-commit --decorate --format=format:'%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) - %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset) %C(white)%s%C(reset) %C(dim white)- %an%C(reset)%C(bold yellow)%d%C(reset)' --all
    lg2 = log --graph --abbrev-commit --decorate --format=format:'%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) - %C(bold cyan)%aD%C(reset) %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset)%C(bold yellow)%d%C(reset)%n''          %C(white)%s%C(reset) %C(dim white)- %an%C(reset)' --all

in your ~/.gitconfig and use it like this: git lg1.