From: Julia Evans Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2026 16:59:35 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/7] [doc] git-merge: link to new merge conflicts guide Message-ID: <2f71028f-d58e-400f-a02e-7a25c032d889@app.fastmail.com> In-Reply-To: On Fri, Sep 25, 2026, at 12:36 PM, D. Ben Knoble wrote: > Hi Julia, > > On Thu, Sep 24, 2026 at 10:46 AM Julia Evans via GitGitGadget > wrote: >> >> From: Julia Evans >> >> 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 ` >> - 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! > 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 ` 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 ` will print out all commits which > caused the merge conflict for ``, 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.