git-merge-index(1) — Linux manual page

NAME \| SYNOPSIS \| DESCRIPTION \| OPTIONS \| GIT \| COLOPHON

GIT-MERGE-INDEX(1)              Git Manual             GIT-MERGE-INDEX(1)

NAME top

       git-merge-index - Run a merge for files needing merging

SYNOPSIS top

       git merge-index [-o] [-q] <merge-program> (-a | ( [--] <file>...) )

DESCRIPTION top

       This looks up the <file>(s) in the index and, if there are any
       merge entries, passes the SHA-1 hash for those files as arguments
       1, 2, 3 (empty argument if no file), and <file> as argument 4.
       File modes for the three files are passed as arguments 5, 6 and 7.

OPTIONS top

       --
           Do not interpret any more arguments as options.

       -a
           Run merge against all files in the index that need merging.

       -o
           Instead of stopping at the first failed merge, do all of them
           in one shot - continue with merging even when previous merges
           returned errors, and only return the error code after all the
           merges.

       -q
           Do not complain about a failed merge program (a merge program
           failure usually indicates conflicts during the merge). This is
           for porcelains which might want to emit custom messages.

       If git merge-index is called with multiple <file>s (or -a) then it
       processes them in turn only stopping if merge returns a non-zero
       exit code.

       Typically this is run with a script calling Git’s imitation of the
       merge command from the RCS package.

       A sample script called git merge-one-file is included in the
       distribution.

       ALERT ALERT ALERT! The Git "merge object order" is different from
       the RCS merge program merge object order. In the above ordering,
       the original is first. But the argument order to the 3-way merge
       program merge is to have the original in the middle. Don’t ask me
       why.

       Examples:

           torvalds@ppc970:~/merge-test> git merge-index cat MM
           This is MM from the original tree.              # original
           This is modified MM in the branch A.            # merge1
           This is modified MM in the branch B.            # merge2
           This is modified MM in the branch B.            # current contents

       or

           torvalds@ppc970:~/merge-test> git merge-index cat AA MM
           cat: : No such file or directory
           This is added AA in the branch A.
           This is added AA in the branch B.
           This is added AA in the branch B.
           fatal: merge program failed

       where the latter example shows how git merge-index will stop
       trying to merge once anything has returned an error (i.e., cat
       returned an error for the AA file, because it didn’t exist in the
       original, and thus git merge-index didn’t even try to merge the MM
       thing).

GIT top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-08-11.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-08-07.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

Git 2.51.0.rc1                  2025-08-07             GIT-MERGE-INDEX(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)