e80178eac6
A few places in the documentation referred to the "`recursive` strategy" using the phrase "`git merge-recursive`", suggesting that it was forking subprocesses to call a toplevel builtin. Perhaps that was relevant to when rebase was a shell script, but it seems like a rather indirect way to refer to the `recursive` strategy. Simplify the references. Acked-by: Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com> Acked-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de> Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
138 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
138 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
MERGE STRATEGIES
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
The merge mechanism (`git merge` and `git pull` commands) allows the
|
|
backend 'merge strategies' to be chosen with `-s` option. Some strategies
|
|
can also take their own options, which can be passed by giving `-X<option>`
|
|
arguments to `git merge` and/or `git pull`.
|
|
|
|
resolve::
|
|
This can only resolve two heads (i.e. the current branch
|
|
and another branch you pulled from) using a 3-way merge
|
|
algorithm. It tries to carefully detect criss-cross
|
|
merge ambiguities and is considered generally safe and
|
|
fast.
|
|
|
|
recursive::
|
|
This can only resolve two heads using a 3-way merge
|
|
algorithm. When there is more than one common
|
|
ancestor that can be used for 3-way merge, it creates a
|
|
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 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, but currently cannot make use of detected
|
|
copies. This is the default merge strategy when pulling
|
|
or merging one branch.
|
|
+
|
|
The 'recursive' strategy can take the following options:
|
|
|
|
ours;;
|
|
This option forces conflicting hunks to be auto-resolved cleanly by
|
|
favoring 'our' version. Changes from the other tree that do not
|
|
conflict with our side are reflected in the merge result.
|
|
For a binary file, the entire contents are taken from our side.
|
|
+
|
|
This should not be confused with the 'ours' merge strategy, which does not
|
|
even look at what the other tree contains at all. It discards everything
|
|
the other tree did, declaring 'our' history contains all that happened in it.
|
|
|
|
theirs;;
|
|
This is the opposite of 'ours'; note that, unlike 'ours', there is
|
|
no 'theirs' merge strategy to confuse this merge option with.
|
|
|
|
patience;;
|
|
With this option, 'merge-recursive' spends a little extra time
|
|
to avoid mismerges that sometimes occur due to unimportant
|
|
matching lines (e.g., braces from distinct functions). Use
|
|
this when the branches to be merged have diverged wildly.
|
|
See also linkgit:git-diff[1] `--patience`.
|
|
|
|
diff-algorithm=[patience|minimal|histogram|myers];;
|
|
Use a different diff algorithm while merging, 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`. Defaults to the
|
|
`diff.algorithm` config setting.
|
|
|
|
ignore-space-change;;
|
|
ignore-all-space;;
|
|
ignore-space-at-eol;;
|
|
ignore-cr-at-eol;;
|
|
Treats lines with the indicated type of whitespace change as
|
|
unchanged for the sake of a three-way merge. Whitespace
|
|
changes mixed with other changes to a line are not ignored.
|
|
See also linkgit:git-diff[1] `-b`, `-w`,
|
|
`--ignore-space-at-eol`, and `--ignore-cr-at-eol`.
|
|
+
|
|
* If 'their' version only introduces whitespace changes to a line,
|
|
'our' version is used;
|
|
* If 'our' version introduces whitespace changes but 'their'
|
|
version includes a substantial change, 'their' version is used;
|
|
* Otherwise, the merge proceeds in the usual way.
|
|
|
|
renormalize;;
|
|
This runs a virtual check-out and check-in of all three stages
|
|
of a file when resolving a three-way merge. This option is
|
|
meant to be used when merging branches with different clean
|
|
filters or end-of-line normalization rules. See "Merging
|
|
branches with differing checkin/checkout attributes" in
|
|
linkgit:gitattributes[5] for details.
|
|
|
|
no-renormalize;;
|
|
Disables the `renormalize` option. This overrides the
|
|
`merge.renormalize` configuration variable.
|
|
|
|
no-renames;;
|
|
Turn off rename detection. This overrides the `merge.renames`
|
|
configuration variable.
|
|
See also linkgit:git-diff[1] `--no-renames`.
|
|
|
|
find-renames[=<n>];;
|
|
Turn on rename detection, optionally setting the similarity
|
|
threshold. This is the default. This overrides the
|
|
'merge.renames' configuration variable.
|
|
See also linkgit:git-diff[1] `--find-renames`.
|
|
|
|
rename-threshold=<n>;;
|
|
Deprecated synonym for `find-renames=<n>`.
|
|
|
|
subtree[=<path>];;
|
|
This option is a more advanced form of 'subtree' strategy, where
|
|
the strategy makes a guess on how two trees must be shifted to
|
|
match with each other when merging. Instead, the specified path
|
|
is prefixed (or stripped from the beginning) to make the shape of
|
|
two trees to match.
|
|
|
|
octopus::
|
|
This resolves cases with more than two heads, but refuses to do
|
|
a complex merge that needs manual resolution. It is
|
|
primarily meant to be used for bundling topic branch
|
|
heads together. This is the default merge strategy when
|
|
pulling or merging more than one branch.
|
|
|
|
ours::
|
|
This resolves any number of heads, but the resulting tree of the
|
|
merge is always that of the current branch head, effectively
|
|
ignoring all changes from all other branches. It is meant to
|
|
be used to supersede old development history of side
|
|
branches. Note that this is different from the -Xours option to
|
|
the 'recursive' merge strategy.
|
|
|
|
subtree::
|
|
This is a modified recursive strategy. When merging trees A and
|
|
B, if B corresponds to a subtree of A, B is first adjusted to
|
|
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.
|