Trouble with file specific merge strategies

> ... So when I came across
> the possibility of using .gitattributes for file specific merge
> strategies, I tried the following:
>
> pattern merge=ours

> suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> ... So when I came across
>> the possibility of using .gitattributes for file specific merge
>> strategies, I tried the following:
>>
>> pattern merge=ours
>
> I do not think we say .gitattributes can give merge strategy
> anywhere in our document.
>
> You can choose one of the few built-in merge drivers but "ours" is
> not one of them.  Have you defined your own merge driver "ours"
> following the example in the gitattributes documentation (look for
> "feel-free merge driver")?

> suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> ... is that discussion on progit talking about
>> something else?
>
> Sorry, I do not read or write progit, so I do not know offhand what
> it says in the section you read and I cannot judge if it was you who
> misread, or if it was book that misspoke.
>

> suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> ... is that discussion on progit talking about
>> something else?
>
> Sorry, I do not read or write progit, so I do not know offhand what
> it says in the section you read and I cannot judge if it was you who
> misread, or if it was book that misspoke.

> You can also use Git attributes to tell Git to use different merge
> strategies for specific files in your project. One very useful option
> is to tell Git to not try to merge specific files when they have
> conflicts, but rather to use your side of the merge over someone
> else’s.
>
> This is helpful if a branch in your project has diverged or is
> specialized, but you want to be able to merge changes back in from
> it, and you want to ignore certain files. Say you have a database
> settings file called database.xml that is different in two branches,
> and you want to merge in your other branch without messing up the
> database file. You can set up an attribute like this:
>
>| database.xml merge=ours
>
> If you merge in the other branch, instead of having merge conflicts
> with the database.xml file, you see something like this:
>
>| $ git merge topic
>| Auto-merging database.xml
>| Merge made by recursive.
>
> In this case, database.xml stays at whatever version you originally had.

> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> ... is that discussion on progit talking about
>>> something else?
>>
>> Sorry, I do not read or write progit, so I do not know offhand what
>> it says in the section you read and I cannot judge if it was you who
>> misread, or if it was book that misspoke.
>
> The book says:
>> You can also use Git attributes to tell Git to use different merge
>> strategies for specific files in your project. One very useful option
>> is to tell Git to not try to merge specific files when they have
>> conflicts, but rather to use your side of the merge over someone
>> else’s.
>>
>> This is helpful if a branch in your project has diverged or is
>> specialized, but you want to be able to merge changes back in from
>> it, and you want to ignore certain files. Say you have a database
>> settings file called database.xml that is different in two branches,
>> and you want to merge in your other branch without messing up the
>> database file. You can set up an attribute like this:
>>
>>| database.xml merge=ours
>>
>> If you merge in the other branch, instead of having merge conflicts
>> with the database.xml file, you see something like this:
>>
>>| $ git merge topic
>>| Auto-merging database.xml
>>| Merge made by recursive.
>>
>> In this case, database.xml stays at whatever version you originally had.
>
> That seems to be incorrect, as far as I understand the gitattributes
> man page.
>