Merge Commits are Back (and Better than Ever)
After a long hiatus, we’re linking to merge commits again. We truncated merge commits months ago, because they didn’t provide any information beyond the shas of the parents, but now…
After a long hiatus, we’re linking to merge commits again. We truncated merge commits months ago, because they didn’t provide any information beyond the shas of the parents, but now we’re exposing the diff between them as an overview of what changed in the branch.
Essentially, what we’re doing behind the scenes is: git diff parent1…parent2
This page will become the basis for a more extensive code review system that, coupled with our current code commenting, will really provide a lot of value for large projects.
(If older merge commits aren’t showing diffs, it’s most likely that it got cached without the additional data)
Written by
Related posts
GitHub availability report: June 2026
In June, we experienced six incidents that resulted in degraded performance across GitHub services.
Q1 2026 Innovation Graph update: Open source collaboration is accelerating worldwide
New Innovation Graph data shows global developer communities growing faster than ever, with collaboration reaching new highs across many economies.
GitHub joins coalition advocating for fixes to California AI Transparency Act to protect open source
We’re calling for targeted amendments to resolve conflicts with open source licensing and align with international transparency frameworks while preserving regulatory intent.