Documentation / git-merge-index.txton commit Merge branch 'fixes' (952f87a)
   1git-merge-index(1)
   2==================
   3v0.1, May 2005
   4
   5NAME
   6----
   7git-merge-index - Runs a merge for files needing merging
   8
   9
  10SYNOPSIS
  11--------
  12'git-merge-index' [-o] [-q] <merge-program> (-a | -- | <file>\*)
  13
  14DESCRIPTION
  15-----------
  16This looks up the <file>(s) in the cache and, if there are any merge
  17entries, passes the SHA1 hash for those files as arguments 1, 2, 3 (empty
  18argument if no file), and <file> as argument 4.  File modes for the three
  19files are passed as arguments 5, 6 and 7.
  20
  21OPTIONS
  22-------
  23--::
  24        Interpret all following arguments as filenames.
  25
  26-a::
  27        Run merge against all files in the cache that need merging.
  28
  29-o::
  30        Instead of stopping at the first failed merge, do all of them
  31        in one shot - continue with merging even when previous merges
  32        returned errors, and only return the error code after all the
  33        merges are over.
  34
  35-q::
  36        Do not complain about failed merge program (the merge program
  37        failure usually indicates conflicts during merge). This is for
  38        porcelains which might want to emit custom messages.
  39
  40If "git-merge-index" is called with multiple <file>s (or -a) then it
  41processes them in turn only stopping if merge returns a non-zero exit
  42code.
  43
  44Typically this is run with the a script calling the merge command from
  45the RCS package.
  46
  47A sample script called "git-merge-one-file" is included in the
  48distribution.
  49
  50ALERT ALERT ALERT! The git "merge object order" is different from the
  51RCS "merge" program merge object order. In the above ordering, the
  52original is first. But the argument order to the 3-way merge program
  53"merge" is to have the original in the middle. Don't ask me why.
  54
  55Examples:
  56
  57  torvalds@ppc970:~/merge-test> git-merge-index cat MM
  58  This is MM from the original tree.                    # original
  59  This is modified MM in the branch A.                  # merge1
  60  This is modified MM in the branch B.                  # merge2
  61  This is modified MM in the branch B.                  # current contents
  62
  63or 
  64
  65  torvalds@ppc970:~/merge-test> git-merge-index cat AA MM
  66  cat: : No such file or directory
  67  This is added AA in the branch A.
  68  This is added AA in the branch B.
  69  This is added AA in the branch B.
  70  fatal: merge program failed
  71
  72where the latter example shows how "git-merge-index" will stop trying to
  73merge once anything has returned an error (ie "cat" returned an error
  74for the AA file, because it didn't exist in the original, and thus
  75"git-merge-index" didn't even try to merge the MM thing).
  76
  77Author
  78------
  79Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
  80One-shot merge by Petr Baudis <pasky@ucw.cz>
  81
  82Documentation
  83--------------
  84Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
  85
  86GIT
  87---
  88Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite
  89