64 lines
2.7 KiB
ReStructuredText
64 lines
2.7 KiB
ReStructuredText
git-merge stages
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################
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:date: 2016-10-04T12:46:00Z
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:category: blog
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:tags: git
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:url: 2016/10/04/git-merge-stages/
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:save_as: 2016/10/04/git-merge-stages/index.html
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:status: published
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:author: Gergely Polonkai
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This was a mail to my company’s internal Git mailing list, after I realised many colleagues can’t
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wrap their heads around merge conflicts.
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Hello all,
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I just saw this on the `git-users <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/git-users>`_ list
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and thought it could help you when you bump into a merge conflict. It is an excerpt from a
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mail by Konstantin Khomoutov (one of the main contributors on the list), with a few
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modifications of mine. Happy debugging :)
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When a merge conflict is detected for a file, Git:
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1. Updates the entry for that file in the index to make it contain
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several so-called “stages”:
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* `0`: “Ours” version – that one which was there in this index entry
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before we begun to merge. At the beginning of the conflict, like
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right after the `git merge` or `git rebase` command this won’t
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exist (unless you had the file in the index, which you didn’t, did
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you?). When you resolve the conflict and use `git add
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my/conflicting/file.cc`, this will be the version added to the
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staging area (index), thus, the resolution of the conflict.
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* `1`: The version from the common ancestor commit, ie. the version
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of the file both of you modified.
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* `2`: The version from `HEAD`. During a merge, this is the current
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branch. During a rebase, this is the branch or commit you are
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rebasing onto, which usually will be `origin/develop`).
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* `3`: The version being merged, or the commit you are rebasing.
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2. Updates the file in the work tree to contain conflict markers and
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the conflicting chunks of text between them (and the text from the
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common ancestor if the `diff3` style of conflict markers was set).
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Now you can use the numbers in point 1 to access the different stages
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of the conflicting file. For example, to see the common ancestor (the
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version both of you modified), use
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.. code-block:: shell
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git show :1:my/conflicting/file.cc
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Or, to see the difference between the two conflicting versions, try
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.. code-block:: shell
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git diff :2:my/conflicting/file.cc :3:my/conflicting/file.cc
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**Note** that you can’t use the ``:0:`` stage *before* you stage your resolution with ``git
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add``, and you can’t use the ``:2:`` and ``:3:`` stages *after* you staged the resolution.
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Fun fact: behind the scenes, these are the files (*revisions*) ``git mergetool`` accesses when
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it presents you the conflict visually.
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