Git merge conflict to always take the newest file

Question

How can I make a git conflict ALWAYS get resolved by taking the newest file (latest changed timestamp), completley without a prompt?

I am building a syncscript with git backend, and I never want to actually merge a file, just override all older copies with the one that was edited/deleted/added last.

Edit: With newest file, I mean newest commit containing that file.

Answer 1

If anyone came here searching for a solution to avoid resolve conflicts arose from automatically generated files such as package-lock.json, pubspec.lock, *.pbxproj, then you can create a .gitattributes file defining a merge strategy

package-lock.json merge=union

See more info on git attributes

Answer 2

I came up this little merge driver that does what I want. For my purpose it is hard coded to the "master" branch and to the "origin" remote. I do not know how to make these parts dynamic.

#!/usr/bin/env sh
if git merge-file -p -q "$2" "$1" "$3" > /dev/null;
        then git merge-file "$2" "$1" "$3";
        else
                MINE=$(git log --format="%ct" --no-merges master -1);
                THEIRS=$(git log --format="%ct" --no-merges origin/master -1);
                if [ $MINE -gt $THEIRS ];
                        then git merge-file -q --ours "$2" "$1" "$3";
                        else git merge-file -q --theirs "$2" "$1" "$3";
                fi
fi

In short I look for the last commit with git-log that was not a merge, formatted as UNIX timestamp, then I compare them and run a custom git-merge with eiter ours or their version.

As a little bonus, it first makes a check to see if it is possible to merge the file without conflict. If that is possible, it merges both files.