From: Junio C Hamano Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 06:20:53 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Document what the stage numbers in the :$n:path syntax mean. Message-ID: <7v4piuafqy.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <46C90C46.1030000@midwinter.com> Steven Grimm writes: > Junio C Hamano wrote: >> People should learn this command. Really. >> >> $ git cat-file -p :$n:path >> >> where $n == 2 is ours, $n == 1 is common ancestor, and $n == 3 >> is theirs. > > The git-rev-parse manpage talks about the :$n:path notation (buried deep in > a list of other syntax) but it just says $n is a "stage number" -- someone > who is not familiar with the internals of git's merge implementation is > never going to be able to figure out that "1", "2", and "3" mean what Junio > said. The patch makes sense. Thanks. Just to give historical background to new readers, this is primarily because the really core level of the plumbing started as not caring between stages 2 and 3 (iow, as far as the merge is concerned, both heads are equal), and the description in the manual was written back then. These days, all the merge strategies and other non-merge programs such as "git am" that can record conflicts as multi-stage index entries consistently use stage #2 as our version, and stages #2 and #3 are not equals anymore.