libreoffice merge(tool?) issue #3 ...

Hi there,

        So - yet again, I'm still a completely clueless git user :-)
basically the same setup and reproduction issue as last time, still
using a stable git: version 1.7.3.4

Setup:
        git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/libs-core
        git checkout integration/dev300_m98
        git remote add stage git://anongit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/staging/libs-core
        git fetch stage

Reproduce:
	rm -Rf *
	git reset --hard # ie. totally clean tree.
        git merge stage/dev300

	I get this output from the merge:

error: refusing to lose untracked file at 'ucb/source/ucp/ext/makefile.mk'

	Then when I run:

$ git mergetool ucb/source/ucp/ext/makefile.mk ..

Deleted merge conflict for 'ucb/source/ucp/ext/makefile.mk':
  {local}: created
  {remote}: deleted
Use (c)reated or (d)eleted file, or (a)bort?

	It seems to suggest that the file is deleted somewhere (in the branch I
am trying to merge in) it seems.

	Interestingly, though - the file is present in both
integration/dev300_m98:

	git log -n1 ucb/source/ucp/ext/makefile.mk | tee
commit 80b61d9c6762b4f195edd1246b903b11ad3f2252
Author: Thomas Arnhold <thomas@arnhold.org>
Date:   Fri Jan 21 14:11:55 2011 +0100

    Remove old RCS lines.

	And also present in the branch I'm merging: stage/dev300:

commit 0c87cb97cf3790fa98bcbb0eef9d174140a4e847
Author: sb <sb@openoffice.org>
Date:   Fri Sep 10 13:10:07 2010 +0200

    sb129: #i113189# change UNO components to use passive registration

	Which makes me wonder - why the deleted / untracked file message ?
probably something obvious, but I found it rather confusing, and again
I've seen a number of examples of this.

	Thanks,

		Michael.

PS. of course, perhaps this is 'just me' - for space / time / simplicty / certainty reasons, I do a lot of "cp -lR foo/.git baa/" to duplicate trees - but AFAIK all git operations are atomic and use renames rather than in-place re-writing: right ?