Documentation / git-merge-index.txton commit Documentation: git gc packs refs by default now (2e294cf)
   1git-merge-index(1)
   2==================
   3
   4NAME
   5----
   6git-merge-index - Run a merge for files needing merging
   7
   8
   9SYNOPSIS
  10--------
  11'git merge-index' [-o] [-q] <merge-program> (-a | [--] <file>\*)
  12
  13DESCRIPTION
  14-----------
  15This looks up the <file>(s) in the index and, if there are any merge
  16entries, passes the SHA1 hash for those files as arguments 1, 2, 3 (empty
  17argument if no file), and <file> as argument 4.  File modes for the three
  18files are passed as arguments 5, 6 and 7.
  19
  20OPTIONS
  21-------
  22\--::
  23        Do not interpret any more arguments as options.
  24
  25-a::
  26        Run merge against all files in the index that need merging.
  27
  28-o::
  29        Instead of stopping at the first failed merge, do all of them
  30        in one shot - continue with merging even when previous merges
  31        returned errors, and only return the error code after all the
  32        merges.
  33
  34-q::
  35        Do not complain about a failed merge program (a merge program
  36        failure usually indicates conflicts during the merge). This is for
  37        porcelains which might want to emit custom messages.
  38
  39If 'git merge-index' is called with multiple <file>s (or -a) then it
  40processes them in turn only stopping if merge returns a non-zero exit
  41code.
  42
  43Typically this is run with a script calling git's imitation of
  44the 'merge' command from the RCS package.
  45
  46A sample script called 'git merge-one-file' is included in the
  47distribution.
  48
  49ALERT ALERT ALERT! The git "merge object order" is different from the
  50RCS 'merge' program merge object order. In the above ordering, the
  51original is first. But the argument order to the 3-way merge program
  52'merge' is to have the original in the middle. Don't ask me why.
  53
  54Examples:
  55
  56  torvalds@ppc970:~/merge-test> git merge-index cat MM
  57  This is MM from the original tree.                    # original
  58  This is modified MM in the branch A.                  # merge1
  59  This is modified MM in the branch B.                  # merge2
  60  This is modified MM in the branch B.                  # current contents
  61
  62or
  63
  64  torvalds@ppc970:~/merge-test> git merge-index cat AA MM
  65  cat: : No such file or directory
  66  This is added AA in the branch A.
  67  This is added AA in the branch B.
  68  This is added AA in the branch B.
  69  fatal: merge program failed
  70
  71where the latter example shows how 'git merge-index' will stop trying to
  72merge once anything has returned an error (i.e., `cat` returned an error
  73for the AA file, because it didn't exist in the original, and thus
  74'git merge-index' didn't even try to merge the MM thing).
  75
  76Author
  77------
  78Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
  79One-shot merge by Petr Baudis <pasky@ucw.cz>
  80
  81Documentation
  82--------------
  83Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
  84
  85GIT
  86---
  87Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite