Can I make fast forwarding be off by default in git?

git merge branch rebase fast-forward
Jason Baker picture Jason Baker · Mar 23, 2010 · Viewed 72.9k times · Source

I can't really ever think of a time when I would use git merge rather than git rebase and not want to have a commit show up. Is there any way to configure git to have fast forwarding off by default? The fact that there's an --ff option would seem to imply that there's a way, but I can't seem to find it in the documentation.

Answer

Eric Platon picture Eric Platon · Jul 25, 2011

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 where someone has not run it without the --global option (local settings override global) run this:

git config --global --add merge.ff false

From the documentation:

merge.ff
By default, git does not create an extra merge commit when merging a commit that is a descendant of the current commit. Instead, the tip of the current branch is fast-forwarded. When set to false, this variable tells git to create an extra merge commit in such a case (equivalent to giving the --no-ff option from the command line). When set to only, only such fast-forward merges are allowed (equivalent to giving the --ff-only option from the command line).

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