title: Git says branch is merged, but changes are apparently not present
body: <p>I've worked myself into a situation that is not making sense to me. I'll try to describe it as best I can.</p>
  
  <p>I have a development branch and I've merged master into it via <code>git checkout develpment &amp;&amp; git merge master</code>. I didn't get any merge conflicts here.</p>
  
  <p>There is a specific commit that I'm interested in, let's say it's <code>abcd123</code>. When I run <code>git branch --contains abcd123</code>, it reports that both <code>development</code> and <code>master</code> contain <code>abcd123</code>. When I do <code>git log</code>, it shows <code>abcd123</code> in the list of commits, both on <code>development</code> and on <code>master</code>.</p>
  
  <p><code>git show abcd123</code> shows that contains changes to two files. But I can't seem to find these changes. When I look at the files, I don't see those changes, neither on <code>development</code> nor on <code>master</code>. When I inspect <code>git log -- path/to/file1</code>, I don't see <code>abcd123</code>, same for <code>git log -- path/to/file2</code>.</p>
  
  <p>What's going on here? How can the commit be present, but the changes are apparently not there?</p>
  
  <p>It is possible that <code>abcd123</code> was originally introduced in another branch (other than <code>development</code>) that was merged into <code>master</code>. I don't know if that could make a difference.</p>
  
  <p>By the way, when I try <code>git checkout master &amp;&amp; git merge development</code> (after merging <code>master</code> into <code>development</code> as shown above) I get a lot of merge conflicts, including file1 and file2. So that seems to show that <code>master</code> was not actually merged into <code>development</code> -- shouldn't <code>git merge development</code> succeed if <code>git merge master</code> was already executed? To cause more confusion, <code>git branch --merged development</code> says that <code>master</code> has been merged into <code>development</code>. I guess that is consistent with <code>git merge master</code> ....</p>
  
  <p>Any advice at this point is much appreciated.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: At this point it appears that the problem is due to a merge that failed or was messed up in some way. If anyone is still reading, I think the direction that torek's answer is going seems most fruitful.</p>