git/Q/What is an octopus merge?
What is an octopus merge in git?
- Short answer: yes — an octopus merge is a
git merge that joins more than two branches into a single merge commit at once, instead of merging them one pair at a time. - It happens whenever
git merge is given more than one branch argument, e.g. git merge branch-a branch-b branch-c. The resulting commit has more than two parents (one per merged branch), which is the "octopus" (many arms/tentacles) in the name. - Constraints:
- It only works when the merge can be resolved automatically — if any branch has a real conflict against the current state, git refuses the octopus merge and asks you to merge the conflicting branches individually instead.
- Because of that, it's mainly useful for combining several independent, non-conflicting topic branches (a common release-integration pattern), not for merges likely to have overlapping changes.
- It is the default merge strategy git picks automatically when more than two branch tips are passed to
git merge; it can also be requested explicitly with -s octopus.