merged tree of the common ancestors and uses that as
the reference tree for the 3-way merge. This has been
reported to result in fewer merge conflicts without
- causing mis-merges by tests done on actual merge commits
+ causing mismerges by tests done on actual merge commits
taken from Linux 2.6 kernel development history.
Additionally this can detect and handle merges involving
renames. This is the default merge strategy when
this when the branches to be merged have diverged wildly.
See also linkgit:git-diff[1] `--patience`.
+diff-algorithm=[patience|minimal|histogram|myers];;
+ Tells 'merge-recursive' to use a different diff algorithm, which
+ can help avoid mismerges that occur due to unimportant matching
+ lines (such as braces from distinct functions). See also
+ linkgit:git-diff[1] `--diff-algorithm`.
+
ignore-space-change;;
ignore-all-space;;
ignore-space-at-eol;;
match the tree structure of A, instead of reading the trees at
the same level. This adjustment is also done to the common
ancestor tree.
+
+With the strategies that use 3-way merge (including the default, 'recursive'),
+if a change is made on both branches, but later reverted on one of the
+branches, that change will be present in the merged result; some people find
+this behavior confusing. It occurs because only the heads and the merge base
+are considered when performing a merge, not the individual commits. The merge
+algorithm therefore considers the reverted change as no change at all, and
+substitutes the changed version instead.