BEHAVIORAL DIFFERENCES
-----------------------
- * empty commits:
+There are some subtle differences how the backends behave.
- am-based rebase will drop any "empty" commits, whether the
- commit started empty (had no changes relative to its parent to
- start with) or ended empty (all changes were already applied
- upstream in other commits).
+Empty commits
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The am backend drops any "empty" commits, regardless of whether the
+commit started empty (had no changes relative to its parent to
+start with) or ended empty (all changes were already applied
+upstream in other commits).
- merge-based rebase does the same.
+The merge backend does the same.
- interactive-based rebase will by default drop commits that
- started empty and halt if it hits a commit that ended up empty.
- The `--keep-empty` option exists for interactive rebases to allow
- it to keep commits that started empty.
+The interactive backend drops commits by default that
+started empty and halts if it hits a commit that ended up empty.
+The `--keep-empty` option exists for the interactive backend to allow
+it to keep commits that started empty.
- * directory rename detection:
+Directory rename detection
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- merge-based and interactive-based rebases work fine with
- directory rename detection. am-based rebases sometimes do not.
+Directory rename heuristics are enabled in the merge and interactive
+backends. Due to the lack of accurate tree information, directory
+rename detection is disabled in the am backend.
include::merge-strategies.txt[]
At this time, the `merge` command will *always* use the `recursive`
merge strategy for regular merges, and `octopus` for octopus merges,
-strategy, with no way to choose a different one. To work around
+with no way to choose a different one. To work around
this, an `exec` command can be used to call `git merge` explicitly,
using the fact that the labels are worktree-local refs (the ref
`refs/rewritten/onto` would correspond to the label `onto`, for example).