Octopus merge for multiple branches in Git - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Octopus Merge for Multiple Branches

📖 Scenario: You are working on a project with multiple feature branches. You want to combine all these branches into one main branch in a single merge commit. This is called an octopus merge in Git.Imagine you have three branches named feature1, feature2, and feature3 that you want to merge into main at once.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to perform an octopus merge in Git to combine multiple branches into one merge commit on the main branch.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create three branches named feature1, feature2, and feature3 from main

Add a simple commit to each feature branch

Switch to main branch

Perform an octopus merge of feature1, feature2, and feature3 into main

Show the merge commit log

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Octopus merges help combine many feature branches into one commit, keeping history clean and easier to understand.

💼 Career

Understanding octopus merges is useful for developers and DevOps engineers managing complex Git workflows with multiple parallel features.

1

Create three feature branches from main

Create three branches named feature1, feature2, and feature3 from the main branch using the commands git branch feature1, git branch feature2, and git branch feature3.

Git

# Create three branches from main
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git branch branch_name to create a new branch from the current branch.

2

Add a commit to each feature branch

Switch to each branch feature1, feature2, and feature3 and create a new file named file1.txt, file2.txt, and file3.txt respectively. Add some text to each file, stage it, and commit with the message Update feature1, Update feature2, and Update feature3 respectively.

Git

git branch feature1
git branch feature2
git branch feature3
# Switch to feature1, create file1.txt, add text, stage and commit
# Repeat for feature2 and feature3 with file2.txt and file3.txt
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git checkout branch_name to switch branches. Use echo to create files and git add and git commit to save changes.

3

Switch to main branch and perform octopus merge

Switch back to the main branch using git checkout main. Then perform an octopus merge of the three branches feature1, feature2, and feature3 into main using a single git merge command.

Git

git branch feature1
git branch feature2
git branch feature3

git checkout feature1
echo "Feature 1 work" > file1.txt
git add file1.txt
git commit -m "Update feature1"

git checkout feature2
echo "Feature 2 work" > file2.txt
git add file2.txt
git commit -m "Update feature2"

git checkout feature3
echo "Feature 3 work" > file3.txt
git add file3.txt
git commit -m "Update feature3"

# Switch to main branch
# Perform octopus merge of feature1, feature2, and feature3
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git checkout main to switch back to main. Use git merge branch1 branch2 branch3 to merge multiple branches at once.

4

Show the merge commit log

Use git log --oneline -1 to display the latest commit message on the main branch. This should show the octopus merge commit.

Git

git branch feature1
git branch feature2
git branch feature3

git checkout feature1
echo "Feature 1 work" > file1.txt
git add file1.txt
git commit -m "Update feature1"

git checkout feature2
echo "Feature 2 work" > file2.txt
git add file2.txt
git commit -m "Update feature2"

git checkout feature3
echo "Feature 3 work" > file3.txt
git add file3.txt
git commit -m "Update feature3"

git checkout main
git merge feature1 feature2 feature3

# Show the latest commit log
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The output should show a merge commit message mentioning all three branches.