Git – “theirs” version of “git merge -s ours”

gitgit-merge

When merging topic branch "B" into "A" using git merge, I get some conflicts. I know all the conflicts can be solved using the version in "B".

I am aware of git merge -s ours. But what I want is something like git merge -s theirs.

Why doesn't it exist? How can I achieve the same result after the conflicting merge with existing git commands? (git checkout every unmerged file from B)

The "solution" of just discarding anything from branch A (the merge commit point to B version of the tree) is not what I am looking for.

Best Answer

A similar alternative is the --strategy-option (short form -X) option, which accepts theirs`. For example:

git checkout branchA
git merge -X theirs branchB

However, this is more equivalent to -X ours than -s ours. The key difference being that -X performs a regular recursive merge, resolving any conflicts using the chosen side, whereas -s ours changes the merge to just completely ignore the other side.

In some cases, the main problem using -X theirs instead of the hypothetical -s theirs is deleted files. In this case, just run git rm with the name of any files that were deleted:

git rm {DELETED-FILE-NAME}

After that, the -X theirs may work as expected.

Of course, doing the actual removal with the git rm command will prevent the conflict from happening in the first place.

Related Solutions

Git – How to resolve merge conflicts in a Git repository

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.

Git – the difference between ‘git pull’ and ‘git fetch’

In the simplest terms, git pull does a git fetch followed by a git merge.

You can do a git fetch at any time to update your remote-tracking branches under refs/remotes/<remote>/. This operation never changes any of your own local branches under refs/heads, and is safe to do without changing your working copy. I have even heard of people running git fetch periodically in a cron job in the background (although I wouldn't recommend doing this).

A git pull is what you would do to bring a local branch up-to-date with its remote version, while also updating your other remote-tracking branches.

From the Git documentation for git pull:

In its default mode, git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH_HEAD.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Git – How to resolve merge conflicts in a Git repository

Git – the difference between ‘git pull’ and ‘git fetch’

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