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diff --git a/Documentation/merge-strategies.txt b/Documentation/merge-strategies.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..66db80296f --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/merge-strategies.txt @@ -0,0 +1,109 @@ +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 mis-merges 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 + 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 to 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'. + +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`. + +ignore-space-change;; +ignore-all-space;; +ignore-space-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`, and + `--ignore-space-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. + +rename-threshold=<n>;; + Controls the similarity threshold used for rename detection. + See also linkgit:git-diff[1] `-M`. + +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. |