If I've got a file whose history is like this:
----A----B
\ \
C----D----E
and I do a blame from E then I'd like to see what changed in revisions B & C, but I don't really care about D, since that was a merge.
Is there a way I can do this? I guess I'm looking for some kind of --no-merges option to git blame, but I'm not seeing one in the manual.
Actually, you do care about D. Consider this case:
in commit B:
2) banana
3) coconut
4) domino // conflicts with C
in commit C:
2) banana
3) coconut
4) elephant // conflicts with B
In commit D, we resolve the conflict:
in commit D:
2) banana
3) coconut
4) domino-elephant
Notice that in D, a line appears which didn't appear in either B or C. If you ignore merges, you would never see that, and you'd never be able to tell where line 4 came from, which is bad.