Re: Improving merge of tricky conflicts

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 23, 2020, 21:39 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqimedq5c8.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <87blk6yrlc.fsf@osv.gnss.ru>

Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

>> You can also do it after "git merge" aborts with conflicts by running:
>>
>>   git checkout --conflict=diff3 my-file
>>
>> but do note that it will check out from the index, overwriting any
>> resolution you've already done in that file.
>
> Though now it gets really odd "git merge" itself doesn't have this
> option.

A command line option is cumbersome that you have to type it every time, so configuration variable makes 100% more sense than an option to "git merge".

If your merge used the merge (as opposed to diff3) style, and seeing that the resulting conflict is not easy to review and you wish you used diff3 style instead, it is way too late for any option to "git merge" to help you.

But having an option to "git checkout" lets you move forward from that state, so it also makes 100% more sense than an option to "git merge".

So, it is not odd at all. Just compare between merge and diff3, think which one would often help you, configure to use it by default, *and* at a rare occasion where the chosen default does not work for you, let "checkout" help you. The thing is, unless you first attempt to "git merge", you won't know what shape of conflict you would get, so you cannot choose the right conflict style command line option, even if one were available.