Stash: Automatic Merge overwrites more recent commit/merge with tons of legacy garbage files

Question

When my colleague recently did a npull request and merge via stash, although he did only commit 1 file, Stash overwrote my more recent merges with his legacy files and even went to delete tons of my more recently commited and merged files (master is locked).

How can this happen and how would you prevent this from happening in the future?

Tim Crall1 · Answer

First you need to understand that you don't commit files.  You commit on the repository - every commit contains every file.

The merge should have merged changes you had each made to the project and should have failed if any of those changes conflicted.  It shouldn't have simply overwritten your changes with his.

You can minimize the pain of merging by doing it early and often.  If a feature branch is taking a long time to work on, it should be periodically updated (using a merge or rebase) with new content from the master branch.

Mark McCormack (Adaptavist) · Answer

Stephan,

I would recommend introducing at least one mandatory reviewer on all PRs especially those that will result in a merge to master.

Adaptavist recently released a new Add-on to the marketplace called ScriptRunner for Stash which would allow you to set a condition together with a single user or group of users automatically as mandatory reviewers.

You could set this to ensure a simple review of PRs are taking place before being merged and you could also use it to conditionally automatically merge too.

Feel free to take a look and send us any feedback as to its suitability.

I hope it helps.