Re: [PATCH 2/7] [doc] git-merge: link to new merge conflicts guide

From: Julia Evans <julia@jvns.ca>
Date: Sep 25, 2026, 16:59 UTC
Message-ID: <2f71028f-d58e-400f-a02e-7a25c032d889@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALnO6CDdoqE2hyZMJg6OZkzNtcnjNXRz=HO4q6cZVpF_wbTXyw@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Sep 25, 2026, at 12:36 PM, D. Ben Knoble wrote:

Show 26 quoted lines

> Hi Julia,
>
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2026 at 10:46 AM Julia Evans via GitGitGadget
> <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> From: Julia Evans <julia@jvns.ca>
>>
>> All of the info about merge conflicts has been moved to the new guide
>
>> Among the changes made to the common ancestor's version,
>> -non-overlapping ones (that is, you changed an area of the file while the
>> -other side left that area intact, or vice versa) are incorporated in the
>> -final result verbatim.  When both sides made changes to the same area,
>> -however, Git cannot randomly pick one side over the other, and asks you to
>> -resolve it by leaving what both sides did to that area.
>
>> - * Look at the diffs from each branch. `git log --merge -p <path>`
>> -   will show diffs first for the `HEAD` version and then the
>> -   `MERGE_HEAD` version.
>
> I think these are both valuable pieces of information we have lost in
> the new guide (unless I misremember just having read patch 1 :).
>
> The first explains a bit more about what a conflict *is*. Maybe that's
> old-hat nowadays, but I think it could be nice to keep a statement
> about why conflicts exist.

Will think about this!

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> The second is a very useful way to get more context to help resolve
> conflicts! I have an alias "conflict = log --oneline --graph
> --left-right --boundary --merge" for a similar purpose, and I think
> the new guide should help folks discover --merge. Often I can get a
> better sense of how to resolve conflicts by comparing the original
> changes on each side, or I might at least know who to ask about what
> to do.

Thanks, I meant to flag this: the reason I deleted it was really just that I couldn't understand what `git log --merge -p <path>` did from the documentation and so I removed it until I could figure it out. I thought that `--merge` meant that it had something to do with merge commits, but upon further investigation it looks like that's not true, and that `--merges` is related to merge commits, `--merge` is something totally different which is relevant any time there's a conflict

My best guess now is that it would make sense to include this under "Tools to get more context". Maybe something like this:

> `git log --merge -p <filename>`  will print out all commits which
>   caused the merge conflict for `<filename>`, and the diff
>  of how they changed the file.

("which caused the merge conflict for" is a little more vague, but I'm trying to convey the intent, and hopefully folks can look at `man git log` if they want to know the specifics)

This does sound really useful.