I having one confusion about a particular git behavior:
Following are the steps and situation (the list of commands are also given later):
mv
, git rm
, git add
.In master rename the file a.txt. During commit I did git rm src/a.txt
but forgot to do git add src/b.txt
In master I do: git rm src/a.txt
and git commit
In master, I edit the content of the file b.txt to "New Content
git add src/b.txt
and git commit
git merge XBranch
The file src/b.txt conflicts, which is perfectly understandable.
But the content is "Old Content
". Why?
Why not is it something like:
<<<<<<< HEAD
New Content
=======
Old content
>>>>>>> XBranch
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2
$ mkdir source
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in d:/merge_temp/test/case2/.git/
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ mkdir src
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ vi src/a.txt
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ cat src/a.txt
Old Content
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ git add src/
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ git commit
[master (root-commit) 148500e] added src/a.txt
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 src/a.txt
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ git branch XBranch
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ git checkout XBranch
Switched to branch 'XBranch'
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (XBranch)
$ mv src/a.txt src/b.txt
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (XBranch)
$ git rm src/a.txt
rm 'src/a.txt'
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (XBranch)
$ git add src/b.txt
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (XBranch)
$ git commit
[XBranch b3ff8fa] changed a.txt to b.txt in XBranch
1 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
rename src/{a.txt => b.txt} (100%)
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (XBranch)
$ git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ mv src/a.txt src/b.txt
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ git rm src/a.txt
rm 'src/a.txt'
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ git commit
[master bfeaecb] removed src/a.txt
1 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
delete mode 100644 src/a.txt
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ vi src/b.txt
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ cat src/b.txt
New Content
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ git add src/b.txt
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ git commit
[master 2361d5e] changed content of b.txt
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 src/b.txt
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master)
$ git merge XBranch
CONFLICT (rename/delete): Rename src/a.txt->src/b.txt in XBranch and deleted in HEAD
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.
sabya@SABYA-PC d:/merge_temp/test/case2 (master|MERGING)
$ cat src/b.txt
Old Content
There is a conflict, but not about the file content. It is about the tree content.
case2
directory (in master), there is a new file b.txt
a.txt => b.txt
When you are resolving the conflict, you are in effect choosing one file or the other (not one line within the file). Hence the "Old Content" in the resulting file.
The OP adds in the comments:
But then how logically is it different from the following situation:
- I add a file
a.txt
inmaster
with "Old Content" and commit it.- I add a file
a.txt
inXBranch
with "New Content" and commit it.- I merge
XBranch
intomaster
. This time it is showing both contents in that file!
This time, both trees (the case2 directory in branches master
and XBranch
)
reference a new file a.txt
: its content get merged, with conflict
resolution. Before, there was a conflict between a a.txt
(renamed as b.txt
) and a new b.txt: both files cannot exist in the
same branch, a choice (of file, not of file content) had to be made.
In step 4 of my question, if I do "
git rm
" and "git add
" in a single commit, it works as I expect! I fail to understand that now. How can I predict when the file will have both contents? When it will just have the content ofXBranch
and when will it have just the content ofmaster
?
That means that:
XBranch
(a.txt
renamed as b.txt
) to master
commit
with a new b.txt
from step 6 (conflict of tree),XBranch
(a.txt
renamed as b.txt
) with master from new
step 4 (a.txt
also renamed as b.txt
): same tree content, but different
blob content: conflict of lines.That being said, the OP still thinks there must be a bug:
Note: Git 2.18 (Q2 2018) changes that conflict detection report with a merge recursive.
See commit 6e7e027 (19 Apr 2018) by Elijah Newren (newren
).
merge-recursive
: avoid spurious rename/rename conflict from dir renamesIf a file on one side of history was renamed, and merely modified on the other side, then applying a directory rename to the modified side gives us a
rename/rename(1to2)
conflict.
We should only apply directory renames to pairs representing either adds or renames.Making this change means that a directory rename testcase that was previously reported as a
rename/delete
conflict will now be reported as amodify/delete
conflict.
When a binary file gets modified and renamed on both sides of history to different locations, both files would be written to the working tree but both would have the contents from "ours
".
This has been corrected with Git 2.27 (Q2 2020), so that the path from each side gets their original content.
See commit 95983da (13 May 2020) by Elijah Newren (newren
).
(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster
-- in commit abbd1d9, 20 May 2020)
merge-recursive
: fix rename/rename(1to2) for working tree with a binaryReported-by: Chunlin Zhang
Signed-off-by: Elijah NewrenWith a rename/rename(1to2) conflict, we attempt to do a three-way merge of the file contents, so that the correct contents can be placed in the working tree at both paths.
If the file is a binary, however, no content merging is possible and we should just use the original version of the file at each of the paths.
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