Parent-Child Commits in Git Log

Learning to read Git log is also an essential skill. Previously, I had some confusion about parent-child relationships in commits, so here’s a summary to organize my thoughts.

If there’s no MR, commits in a single branch are actually a straight line. But because of MR, the entire commit graph becomes a tree structure.

Summary

• For a commit, the commit it was based on when created (i.e., the previous commit) will be its parent commit

• For a commit, if a commit is created based on it, that will be its child commit

• Each commit’s parent commit and child commit are not necessarily unique

  As shown below, this merge commit will have two parents

  

  

Final Thoughts

Git looks simple, but using it well requires skill. Personally, I think the best way to learn is to think about principles during practice and summarize more.