Documentation / merge-strategies.txton commit GIT 1.6.2.2 (3346330)
   1MERGE STRATEGIES
   2----------------
   3
   4resolve::
   5        This can only resolve two heads (i.e. the current branch
   6        and another branch you pulled from) using 3-way merge
   7        algorithm.  It tries to carefully detect criss-cross
   8        merge ambiguities and is considered generally safe and
   9        fast.
  10
  11recursive::
  12        This can only resolve two heads using 3-way merge
  13        algorithm.  When there are more than one common
  14        ancestors that can be used for 3-way merge, it creates a
  15        merged tree of the common ancestors and uses that as
  16        the reference tree for the 3-way merge.  This has been
  17        reported to result in fewer merge conflicts without
  18        causing mis-merges by tests done on actual merge commits
  19        taken from Linux 2.6 kernel development history.
  20        Additionally this can detect and handle merges involving
  21        renames.  This is the default merge strategy when
  22        pulling or merging one branch.
  23
  24octopus::
  25        This resolves more than two-head case, but refuses to do
  26        complex merge that needs manual resolution.  It is
  27        primarily meant to be used for bundling topic branch
  28        heads together.  This is the default merge strategy when
  29        pulling or merging more than one branches.
  30
  31ours::
  32        This resolves any number of heads, but the result of the
  33        merge is always the current branch head.  It is meant to
  34        be used to supersede old development history of side
  35        branches.
  36
  37subtree::
  38        This is a modified recursive strategy. When merging trees A and
  39        B, if B corresponds to a subtree of A, B is first adjusted to
  40        match the tree structure of A, instead of reading the trees at
  41        the same level. This adjustment is also done to the common
  42        ancestor tree.