Git – How to delete all of the Git stashes at once

Another way to make a directory stay (almost) empty (in the repository) is to create a .gitignore file inside that directory that contains these four lines:

# Ignore everything in this directory
*
# Except this file
!.gitignore

Then you don't have to get the order right the way that you have to do in m104's solution.

This also gives the benefit that files in that directory won't show up as "untracked" when you do a git status.

Making @GreenAsJade's comment persistent:

I think it's worth noting that this solution does precisely what the question asked for, but is not perhaps what many people looking at this question will have been looking for. This solution guarantees that the directory remains empty. It says "I truly never want files checked in here". As opposed to "I don't have any files to check in here, yet, but I need the directory here, files may be coming later".

Try: git mergetool

It opens a GUI that steps you through each conflict, and you get to choose how to merge. Sometimes it requires a bit of hand editing afterwards, but usually it's enough by itself. It is much better than doing the whole thing by hand certainly.

As per Josh Glover's comment:

The command

doesn't necessarily open a GUI unless you install one. Running git mergetool for me resulted in vimdiff being used. You can install one of the following tools to use it instead: meld, opendiff, kdiff3, tkdiff, xxdiff, tortoisemerge, gvimdiff, diffuse, ecmerge, p4merge, araxis, vimdiff, emerge.

Below is the sample procedure to use vimdiff for resolve merge conflicts. Based on this link

Step 1: Run following commands in your terminal

git config merge.tool vimdiff
git config merge.conflictstyle diff3
git config mergetool.prompt false

This will set vimdiff as the default merge tool.

Step 2: Run following command in terminal

git mergetool

Step 3: You will see a vimdiff display in following format

  ╔═══════╦══════╦════════╗
  ║       ║      ║        ║
  ║ LOCAL ║ BASE ║ REMOTE ║
  ║       ║      ║        ║
  ╠═══════╩══════╩════════╣
  ║                       ║
  ║        MERGED         ║
  ║                       ║
  ╚═══════════════════════╝

These 4 views are

LOCAL – this is file from the current branch

BASE – common ancestor, how file looked before both changes

REMOTE – file you are merging into your branch

MERGED – merge result, this is what gets saved in the repo

You can navigate among these views using ctrl+w. You can directly reach MERGED view using ctrl+w followed by j.

More information about vimdiff navigation is here and here.

Step 4. You could edit the MERGED view the following way

If you want to get changes from REMOTE

:diffg RE

If you want to get changes from BASE

:diffg BA

If you want to get changes from LOCAL

:diffg LO

Step 5. Save, Exit, Commit and Clean up

:wqa save and exit from vi

git commit -m "message"

git clean Remove extra files (e.g. *.orig) created by diff tool.