How to resolve merge conflicts in a Git repository?

Question

I want to resolve merge conflicts in my Git repository.

How can I do that?

Answer 1

Try: git mergetool

It opens a GUI that steps you through each conflict, and you get to choose how to merge. Sometimes it requires a bit of hand editing afterwards, but usually it's enough by itself. It is much better than doing the whole thing by hand certainly.

As per Josh Glover's comment:

The command

doesn't necessarily open a GUI unless you install one. Running git mergetool for me resulted in vimdiff being used. You can install one of the following tools to use it instead: meld, opendiff, kdiff3, tkdiff, xxdiff, tortoisemerge, gvimdiff, diffuse, ecmerge, p4merge, araxis, vimdiff, emerge.

Below is the sample procedure to use vimdiff for resolve merge conflicts. Based on this link

Step 1: Run following commands in your terminal

git config merge.tool vimdiff git config merge.conflictstyle diff3 git config mergetool.prompt false 

This will set vimdiff as the default merge tool.

Step 2: Run following command in terminal

git mergetool 

Step 3: You will see a vimdiff display in following format

  ╔═══════╦══════╦════════╗   ║       ║      ║        ║   ║ LOCAL ║ BASE ║ REMOTE ║   ║       ║      ║        ║   ╠═══════╩══════╩════════╣   ║                       ║   ║        MERGED         ║   ║                       ║   ╚═══════════════════════╝ 

These 4 views are

LOCAL – this is file from the current branch

BASE – common ancestor, how file looked before both changes

REMOTE – file you are merging into your branch

MERGED – merge result, this is what gets saved in the repo

You can navigate among these views using ctrl+w. You can directly reach MERGED view using ctrl+w followed by j.

More information about vimdiff navigation is here and here.

Step 4. You could edit the MERGED view the following way

If you want to get changes from REMOTE

:diffg RE 

If you want to get changes from BASE

:diffg BA 

If you want to get changes from LOCAL

:diffg LO 

Step 5. Save, Exit, Commit and Clean up

:wqa save and exit from vi

git commit -m "message"

git clean Remove extra files (e.g. *.orig) created by diff tool.

Answer 2

Here's a probable use case, from the top:

You're going to pull some changes, but oops, you're not up to date:

git fetch origin git pull origin master  From ssh://[email protected]:22/projectname  * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD Updating a030c3a..ee25213 error: Entry 'filename.c' not uptodate. Cannot merge. 

So you get up-to-date and try again, but have a conflict:

git add filename.c git commit -m "made some wild and crazy changes" git pull origin master  From ssh://[email protected]:22/projectname  * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD Auto-merging filename.c CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in filename.c Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result. 

So you decide to take a look at the changes:

git mergetool 

Oh my, oh my, upstream changed some things, but just to use my changes...no...their changes...

git checkout --ours filename.c git checkout --theirs filename.c git add filename.c git commit -m "using theirs" 

And then we try a final time

git pull origin master  From ssh://[email protected]:22/projectname  * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD Already up-to-date. 

Ta-da!