1MERGE STRATEGIES 2---------------- 3 4The merge mechanism ('git-merge' and 'git-pull' commands) allows the 5backend 'merge strategies' to be chosen with `-s` option. Some strategies 6can also take their own options, which can be passed by giving `-X<option>` 7arguments to 'git-merge' and/or 'git-pull'. 8 9resolve:: 10 This can only resolve two heads (i.e. the current branch 11 and another branch you pulled from) using a 3-way merge 12 algorithm. It tries to carefully detect criss-cross 13 merge ambiguities and is considered generally safe and 14 fast. 15 16recursive:: 17 This can only resolve two heads using a 3-way merge 18 algorithm. When there is more than one common 19 ancestor that can be used for 3-way merge, it creates a 20 merged tree of the common ancestors and uses that as 21 the reference tree for the 3-way merge. This has been 22 reported to result in fewer merge conflicts without 23 causing mis-merges by tests done on actual merge commits 24 taken from Linux 2.6 kernel development history. 25 Additionally this can detect and handle merges involving 26 renames. This is the default merge strategy when 27 pulling or merging one branch. 28+ 29The 'recursive' strategy can take the following options: 30 31ours;; 32 This option forces conflicting hunks to be auto-resolved cleanly by 33 favoring 'our' version. Changes from the other tree that do not 34 conflict with our side are reflected to the merge result. 35+ 36This should not be confused with the 'ours' merge strategy, which does not 37even look at what the other tree contains at all. It discards everything 38the other tree did, declaring 'our' history contains all that happened in it. 39 40theirs;; 41 This is opposite of 'ours'. 42 43patience;; 44 With this option, 'merge-recursive' spends a little extra time 45 to avoid mismerges that sometimes occur due to unimportant 46 matching lines (e.g., braces from distinct functions). Use 47 this when the branches to be merged have diverged wildly. 48 See also linkgit:git-diff[1] `--patience`. 49 50ignore-space-change;; 51ignore-all-space;; 52ignore-space-at-eol;; 53 Treats lines with the indicated type of whitespace change as 54 unchanged for the sake of a three-way merge. Whitespace 55 changes mixed with other changes to a line are not ignored. 56 See also linkgit:git-diff[1] `-b`, `-w`, and 57 `--ignore-space-at-eol`. 58+ 59* If 'their' version only introduces whitespace changes to a line, 60 'our' version is used; 61* If 'our' version introduces whitespace changes but 'their' 62 version includes a substantial change, 'their' version is used; 63* Otherwise, the merge proceeds in the usual way. 64 65renormalize;; 66 This runs a virtual check-out and check-in of all three stages 67 of a file when resolving a three-way merge. This option is 68 meant to be used when merging branches with different clean 69 filters or end-of-line normalization rules. See "Merging 70 branches with differing checkin/checkout attributes" in 71 linkgit:gitattributes[5] for details. 72 73no-renormalize;; 74 Disables the `renormalize` option. This overrides the 75 `merge.renormalize` configuration variable. 76 77subtree[=<path>];; 78 This option is a more advanced form of 'subtree' strategy, where 79 the strategy makes a guess on how two trees must be shifted to 80 match with each other when merging. Instead, the specified path 81 is prefixed (or stripped from the beginning) to make the shape of 82 two trees to match. 83 84octopus:: 85 This resolves cases with more than two heads, but refuses to do 86 a complex merge that needs manual resolution. It is 87 primarily meant to be used for bundling topic branch 88 heads together. This is the default merge strategy when 89 pulling or merging more than one branch. 90 91ours:: 92 This resolves any number of heads, but the resulting tree of the 93 merge is always that of the current branch head, effectively 94 ignoring all changes from all other branches. It is meant to 95 be used to supersede old development history of side 96 branches. Note that this is different from the -Xours option to 97 the 'recursive' merge strategy. 98 99subtree:: 100 This is a modified recursive strategy. When merging trees A and 101 B, if B corresponds to a subtree of A, B is first adjusted to 102 match the tree structure of A, instead of reading the trees at 103 the same level. This adjustment is also done to the common 104 ancestor tree.