Git merge strategy 'theirs' is not resolving modify/delete conflict

Question

When performing a git merge with the following options:

git merge -X theirs master

There are occasionally conflicted files like so:

CONFLICT (modify/delete): File_A.java deleted in master and modified in HEAD. Version HEAD of File_A.java left in tree.

However, I would like for the -X theirs option to be recognized in these cases, and use the theirs version of the change, which is for the file to be deleted.

Is there a reason this type of conflict is not automatically resolved, especially since I'm providing a specific merge strategy that suggests it should remove the file?

Further, how (if possible) can I update my merge command to use the theirs version of this type of conflict?

Answer 1

A bit late but might be useful, you can resolve this type of conflict with:

git merge -X theirs master git diff --name-only --diff-filter=U | xargs git rm 

Basically it means "delete all unmerged files" during the conflict resolution.

Answer 2

Looks like theirs option of recursive strategy (this is what you actually use, see the [1]) does not affect tree merging, it is used only for file content merging when both files modified only. I don't really know if there is any merge command option which can do what you want. You could try to make a script which scans conflicted files (with git status --porcelain) and then either removes the file (git rm --force <file>) or get the remote version of it (git checkout --theirs <file>)

[1] https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-merge.html#_merge_strategies