Why do I always have to merge manually on git pull?

Question

I am a new user of git and can't figure out how to get around this. I have had some experience with SVN and am going by SVN behavior.

Any time I pull files from remote repository, and the file I have modified are also modified remotely, it needs merging. I can understand merge conflicts for complex changes, but I am seeing merge conflicts for very small (e.g. one line change in different functions) changes. As far as I remember, SVN could merge most of it automatically and will put the file in conflicted state only if automatic merge failed.

For git, it seems to be happening every time and forcing to open the git merge tool. Is there any way to automatically merge the files? Am I missing some setting that is basically putting the repository in conflicted set by default?

Answer 1

A common cause of this is differing line endings. Are you sharing a repo with someone else using a different OS? SVN does some munging of line endings. Git, on the other hand, stores files byte-for-byte exactly as they are by default. That means that when a Windows user saves a file with \r\n line endings and a Linux user saves the file with \n line feeds, every line appears changed, and if any other changes are in play, it causes conflicts everywhere. To change the way line endings are handled, use the configuration setting "core.autocrlf". In a repo where different OS's are in play, I recommend setting it to "input" for Linux users and "true" for Windows users:

git config [--global] core.autocrlf input

or

git config [--global] core.autocrlf true

Actually, I'd say just use these settings globally all the time. They'll save you some heartache. Read more about core.autocrlf on the git-config man page, and note that if you're suffering from this problem and you turn autocrlf on with an existing repository, you may see some startling behavior, but it can be explained.