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GIT-MERGE(1) Git Manual GIT-MERGE(1)
git-merge - Join two or more development histories together
git merge [-n] [--stat] [--compact-summary] [--no-commit] [--squash] [--[no-]edit]
[--no-verify] [-s <strategy>] [-X <strategy-option>] [-S[<keyid>]]
[--[no-]allow-unrelated-histories]
[--[no-]rerere-autoupdate] [-m <msg>] [-F <file>]
[--into-name <branch>] [<commit>...]
git merge (--continue | --abort | --quit)
Incorporates changes from the named commits (since the time their
histories diverged from the current branch) into the current
branch. This command is used by git pull to incorporate changes
from another repository and can be used by hand to merge changes
from one branch into another.
Assume the following history exists and the current branch is
master:
A---B---C topic
/
D---E---F---G master
Then git merge topic will replay the changes made on the topic
branch since it diverged from master (i.e., E) until its current
commit (C) on top of master, and record the result in a new commit
along with the names of the two parent commits and a log message
from the user describing the changes. Before the operation,
ORIG_HEAD is set to the tip of the current branch (G).
A---B---C topic
/ \
D---E---F---G---H master
A merge stops if there’s a conflict that cannot be resolved
automatically or if --no-commit was provided when initiating the
merge. At that point you can run git merge --abort or git merge
--continue.
git merge --abort will abort the merge process and try to
reconstruct the pre-merge state. However, if there were
uncommitted changes when the merge started (and especially if
those changes were further modified after the merge was started),
git merge --abort will in some cases be unable to reconstruct the
original (pre-merge) changes. Therefore:
Warning
Running git merge with non-trivial uncommitted changes is
discouraged: while possible, it may leave you in a state that
is hard to back out of in the case of a conflict.
--commit, --no-commit
Perform the merge and commit the result. This option can be
used to override --no-commit.
With --no-commit perform the merge and stop just before
creating a merge commit, to give the user a chance to inspect
and further tweak the merge result before committing.
Note that fast-forward updates do not create a merge commit
and therefore there is no way to stop those merges with
--no-commit. Thus, if you want to ensure your branch is not
changed or updated by the merge command, use --no-ff with
--no-commit.
--edit, -e, --no-edit
Invoke an editor before committing successful mechanical merge
to further edit the auto-generated merge message, so that the
user can explain and justify the merge. The --no-edit option
can be used to accept the auto-generated message (this is
generally discouraged). The --edit (or -e) option is still
useful if you are giving a draft message with the -m option
from the command line and want to edit it in the editor.
Older scripts may depend on the historical behaviour of not
allowing the user to edit the merge log message. They will see
an editor opened when they run git merge. To make it easier to
adjust such scripts to the updated behaviour, the environment
variable GIT_MERGE_AUTOEDIT can be set to no at the beginning
of them.
--cleanup=<mode>
This option determines how the merge message will be cleaned
up before committing. See git-commit(1) for more details. In
addition, if the <mode> is given a value of scissors, scissors
will be appended to MERGE_MSG before being passed on to the
commit machinery in the case of a merge conflict.
--ff, --no-ff, --ff-only
Specifies how a merge is handled when the merged-in history is
already a descendant of the current history. --ff is the
default unless merging an annotated (and possibly signed) tag
that is not stored in its natural place in the refs/tags/
hierarchy, in which case --no-ff is assumed.
With --ff, when possible resolve the merge as a fast-forward
(only update the branch pointer to match the merged branch; do
not create a merge commit). When not possible (when the
merged-in history is not a descendant of the current history),
create a merge commit.
With --no-ff, create a merge commit in all cases, even when
the merge could instead be resolved as a fast-forward.
With --ff-only, resolve the merge as a fast-forward when
possible. When not possible, refuse to merge and exit with a
non-zero status.
-S[<key-id>], --gpg-sign[=<key-id>], --no-gpg-sign
GPG-sign the resulting merge commit. The <key-id> argument is
optional and defaults to the committer identity; if specified,
it must be stuck to the option without a space. --no-gpg-sign
is useful to countermand both commit.gpgSign configuration
variable, and earlier --gpg-sign.
--log[=<n>], --no-log
In addition to branch names, populate the log message with
one-line descriptions from at most <n> actual commits that are
being merged. See also git-fmt-merge-msg(1).
With --no-log do not list one-line descriptions from the
actual commits being merged.
--signoff, --no-signoff
Add a Signed-off-by trailer by the committer at the end of the
commit log message. The meaning of a signoff depends on the
project to which you’re committing. For example, it may
certify that the committer has the rights to submit the work
under the project’s license or agrees to some contributor
representation, such as a Developer Certificate of Origin.
(See https://developercertificate.org for the one used by the
Linux kernel and Git projects.) Consult the documentation or
leadership of the project to which you’re contributing to
understand how the signoffs are used in that project.
The --no-signoff option can be used to countermand an earlier
--signoff option on the command line.
--stat, -n, --no-stat
Show a diffstat at the end of the merge. The diffstat is also
controlled by the configuration option merge.stat.
With -n or --no-stat do not show a diffstat at the end of the
merge.
--compact-summary
Show a compact-summary at the end of the merge.
--squash, --no-squash
Produce the working tree and index state as if a real merge
happened (except for the merge information), but do not
actually make a commit, move the HEAD, or record
$GIT_DIR/MERGE_HEAD (to cause the next git commit command to
create a merge commit). This allows you to create a single
commit on top of the current branch whose effect is the same
as merging another branch (or more in case of an octopus).
With --no-squash perform the merge and commit the result. This
option can be used to override --squash.
With --squash, --commit is not allowed, and will fail.
--[no-]verify
By default, the pre-merge and commit-msg hooks are run. When
--no-verify is given, these are bypassed. See also
githooks(5).
-s <strategy>, --strategy=<strategy>
Use the given merge strategy; can be supplied more than once
to specify them in the order they should be tried. If there is
no -s option, a built-in list of strategies is used instead
(ort when merging a single head, octopus otherwise).
-X <option>, --strategy-option=<option>
Pass merge strategy specific option through to the merge
strategy.
--verify-signatures, --no-verify-signatures
Verify that the tip commit of the side branch being merged is
signed with a valid key, i.e. a key that has a valid uid: in
the default trust model, this means the signing key has been
signed by a trusted key. If the tip commit of the side branch
is not signed with a valid key, the merge is aborted.
--summary, --no-summary
Synonyms to --stat and --no-stat; these are deprecated and
will be removed in the future.
-q, --quiet
Operate quietly. Implies --no-progress.
-v, --verbose
Be verbose.
--progress, --no-progress
Turn progress on/off explicitly. If neither is specified,
progress is shown if standard error is connected to a
terminal. Note that not all merge strategies may support
progress reporting.
--autostash, --no-autostash
Automatically create a temporary stash entry before the
operation begins, record it in the ref MERGE_AUTOSTASH and
apply it after the operation ends. This means that you can run
the operation on a dirty worktree. However, use with care: the
final stash application after a successful merge might result
in non-trivial conflicts.
--allow-unrelated-histories
By default, git merge command refuses to merge histories that
do not share a common ancestor. This option can be used to
override this safety when merging histories of two projects
that started their lives independently. As that is a very rare
occasion, no configuration variable to enable this by default
exists or will be added.
-m <msg>
Set the commit message to be used for the merge commit (in
case one is created).
If --log is specified, a shortlog of the commits being merged
will be appended to the specified message.
The git fmt-merge-msg command can be used to give a good
default for automated git merge invocations. The automated
message can include the branch description.
--into-name <branch>
Prepare the default merge message as if merging to the branch
<branch>, instead of the name of the real branch to which the
merge is made.
-F <file>, --file=<file>
Read the commit message to be used for the merge commit (in
case one is created).
If --log is specified, a shortlog of the commits being merged
will be appended to the specified message.
--rerere-autoupdate, --no-rerere-autoupdate
After the rerere mechanism reuses a recorded resolution on the
current conflict to update the files in the working tree,
allow it to also update the index with the result of
resolution. --no-rerere-autoupdate is a good way to
double-check what rerere did and catch potential mismerges,
before committing the result to the index with a separate git
add.
--overwrite-ignore, --no-overwrite-ignore
Silently overwrite ignored files from the merge result. This
is the default behavior. Use --no-overwrite-ignore to abort.
--abort
Abort the current conflict resolution process, and try to
reconstruct the pre-merge state. If an autostash entry is
present, apply it to the worktree.
If there were uncommitted worktree changes present when the
merge started, git merge --abort will in some cases be unable
to reconstruct these changes. It is therefore recommended to
always commit or stash your changes before running git merge.
git merge --abort is equivalent to git reset --merge when
MERGE_HEAD is present unless MERGE_AUTOSTASH is also present
in which case git merge --abort applies the stash entry to the
worktree whereas git reset --merge will save the stashed
changes in the stash list.
--quit
Forget about the current merge in progress. Leave the index
and the working tree as-is. If MERGE_AUTOSTASH is present, the
stash entry will be saved to the stash list.
--continue
After a git merge stops due to conflicts you can conclude the
merge by running git merge --continue (see "HOW TO RESOLVE
CONFLICTS" section below).
<commit>...
Commits, usually other branch heads, to merge into our branch.
Specifying more than one commit will create a merge with more
than two parents (affectionately called an Octopus merge).
If no commit is given from the command line, merge the
remote-tracking branches that the current branch is configured
to use as its upstream. See also the configuration section of
this manual page.
When FETCH_HEAD (and no other commit) is specified, the
branches recorded in the .git/FETCH_HEAD file by the previous
invocation of git fetch for merging are merged to the current
branch.
Before applying outside changes, you should get your own work in
good shape and committed locally, so it will not be clobbered if
there are conflicts. See also git-stash(1). git pull and git merge
will stop without doing anything when local uncommitted changes
overlap with files that git pull/git merge may need to update.
To avoid recording unrelated changes in the merge commit, git pull
and git merge will also abort if there are any changes registered
in the index relative to the HEAD commit. (Special narrow
exceptions to this rule may exist depending on which merge
strategy is in use, but generally, the index must match HEAD.)
If all named commits are already ancestors of HEAD, git merge will
exit early with the message "Already up to date."
Often the current branch head is an ancestor of the named commit.
This is the most common case especially when invoked from git
pull: you are tracking an upstream repository, you have committed
no local changes, and now you want to update to a newer upstream
revision. In this case, a new commit is not needed to store the
combined history; instead, the HEAD (along with the index) is
updated to point at the named commit, without creating an extra
merge commit.
This behavior can be suppressed with the --no-ff option.
Except in a fast-forward merge (see above), the branches to be
merged must be tied together by a merge commit that has both of
them as its parents.
A merged version reconciling the changes from all branches to be
merged is committed, and your HEAD, index, and working tree are
updated to it. It is possible to have modifications in the working
tree as long as they do not overlap; the update will preserve
them.
When it is not obvious how to reconcile the changes, the following
happens:
1. The HEAD pointer stays the same.
2. The MERGE_HEAD ref is set to point to the other branch head.
3. Paths that merged cleanly are updated both in the index file
and in your working tree.
4. For conflicting paths, the index file records up to three
versions: stage 1 stores the version from the common ancestor,
stage 2 from HEAD, and stage 3 from MERGE_HEAD (you can
inspect the stages with git ls-files -u). The working tree
files contain the result of the merge operation; i.e. 3-way
merge results with familiar conflict markers <<< === >>>.
5. A ref named AUTO_MERGE is written, pointing to a tree
corresponding to the current content of the working tree
(including conflict markers for textual conflicts). Note that
this ref is only written when the ort merge strategy is used
(the default).
6. No other changes are made. In particular, the local
modifications you had before you started merge will stay the
same and the index entries for them stay as they were, i.e.
matching HEAD.
If you tried a merge which resulted in complex conflicts and want
to start over, you can recover with git merge --abort.
When merging an annotated (and possibly signed) tag, Git always
creates a merge commit even if a fast-forward merge is possible,
and the commit message template is prepared with the tag message.
Additionally, if the tag is signed, the signature check is
reported as a comment in the message template. See also
git-tag(1).
When you want to just integrate with the work leading to the
commit that happens to be tagged, e.g. synchronizing with an
upstream release point, you may not want to make an unnecessary
merge commit.
In such a case, you can "unwrap" the tag yourself before feeding
it to git merge, or pass --ff-only when you do not have any work
on your own. e.g.
git fetch origin
git merge v1.2.3^0
git merge --ff-only v1.2.3
During a merge, the working tree files are updated to reflect the
result of the merge. Among the changes made to the common
ancestor’s version, non-overlapping ones (that is, you changed an
area of the file while the other side left that area intact, or
vice versa) are incorporated in the final result verbatim. When
both sides made changes to the same area, however, Git cannot
randomly pick one side over the other, and asks you to resolve it
by leaving what both sides did to that area.
By default, Git uses the same style as the one used by the "merge"
program from the RCS suite to present such a conflicted hunk, like
this:
Here are lines that are either unchanged from the common
ancestor, or cleanly resolved because only one side changed,
or cleanly resolved because both sides changed the same way.
<<<<<<< yours:sample.txt
Conflict resolution is hard;
let's go shopping.
=======
Git makes conflict resolution easy.
>>>>>>> theirs:sample.txt
And here is another line that is cleanly resolved or unmodified.
The area where a pair of conflicting changes happened is marked
with markers <<<<<<<, =======, and >>>>>>>. The part before the
======= is typically your side, and the part afterwards is
typically their side.
The default format does not show what the original said in the
conflicting area. You cannot tell how many lines are deleted and
replaced with Barbie’s remark on your side. The only thing you can
tell is that your side wants to say it is hard and you’d prefer to
go shopping, while the other side wants to claim it is easy.
An alternative style can be used by setting the
merge.conflictStyle configuration variable to either diff3 or
zdiff3. In diff3 style, the above conflict may look like this:
Here are lines that are either unchanged from the common
ancestor, or cleanly resolved because only one side changed,
<<<<<<< yours:sample.txt
or cleanly resolved because both sides changed the same way.
Conflict resolution is hard;
let's go shopping.
||||||| base:sample.txt
or cleanly resolved because both sides changed identically.
Conflict resolution is hard.
=======
or cleanly resolved because both sides changed the same way.
Git makes conflict resolution easy.
>>>>>>> theirs:sample.txt
And here is another line that is cleanly resolved or unmodified.
while in zdiff3 style, it may look like this:
Here are lines that are either unchanged from the common
ancestor, or cleanly resolved because only one side changed,
or cleanly resolved because both sides changed the same way.
<<<<<<< yours:sample.txt
Conflict resolution is hard;
let's go shopping.
||||||| base:sample.txt
or cleanly resolved because both sides changed identically.
Conflict resolution is hard.
=======
Git makes conflict resolution easy.
>>>>>>> theirs:sample.txt
And here is another line that is cleanly resolved or unmodified.
In addition to the <<<<<<<, =======, and >>>>>>> markers, it uses
another ||||||| marker that is followed by the original text. You
can tell that the original just stated a fact, and your side
simply gave in to that statement and gave up, while the other side
tried to have a more positive attitude. You can sometimes come up
with a better resolution by viewing the original.
After seeing a conflict, you can do two things:
• Decide not to merge. The only clean-ups you need are to reset
the index file to the HEAD commit to reverse 2. and to clean
up working tree changes made by 2. and 3.; git merge --abort
can be used for this.
• Resolve the conflicts. Git will mark the conflicts in the
working tree. Edit the files into shape and git add them to
the index. Use git commit or git merge --continue to seal the
deal. The latter command checks whether there is a
(interrupted) merge in progress before calling git commit.
You can work through the conflict with a number of tools:
• Use a mergetool. git mergetool to launch a graphical
mergetool which will work through the merge with you.
• Look at the diffs. git diff will show a three-way diff,
highlighting changes from both the HEAD and MERGE_HEAD
versions. git diff AUTO_MERGE will show what changes you’ve
made so far to resolve textual conflicts.
• Look at the diffs from each branch. git log --merge -p <path>
will show diffs first for the HEAD version and then the
MERGE_HEAD version.
• Look at the originals. git show :1:filename shows the common
ancestor, git show :2:filename shows the HEAD version, and git
show :3:filename shows the MERGE_HEAD version.
• Merge branches fixes and enhancements on top of the current
branch, making an octopus merge:
$ git merge fixes enhancements
• Merge branch obsolete into the current branch, using ours
merge strategy:
$ git merge -s ours obsolete
• Merge branch maint into the current branch, but do not make a
new commit automatically:
$ git merge --no-commit maint
This can be used when you want to include further changes to
the merge, or want to write your own merge commit message.
You should refrain from abusing this option to sneak
substantial changes into a merge commit. Small fixups like
bumping release/version name would be acceptable.
The merge mechanism (git merge and git pull commands) allows the
backend merge strategies to be chosen with -s option. Some
strategies can also take their own options, which can be passed by
giving -X<option> arguments to git merge and/or git pull.
ort
This is the default merge strategy when pulling or merging one
branch. This strategy can only resolve two heads using a 3-way
merge algorithm. When there is more than one common ancestor
that can be used for 3-way merge, it creates a merged tree of
the common ancestors and uses that as the reference tree for
the 3-way merge. This has been reported to result in fewer
merge conflicts without causing mismerges by tests done on
actual merge commits taken from Linux 2.6 kernel development
history. Additionally this strategy can detect and handle
merges involving renames. It does not make use of detected
copies. The name for this algorithm is an acronym ("Ostensibly
Recursive’s Twin") and came from the fact that it was written
as a replacement for the previous default algorithm,
recursive.
In the case where the path is a submodule, if the submodule
commit used on one side of the merge is a descendant of the
submodule commit used on the other side of the merge, Git
attempts to fast-forward to the descendant. Otherwise, Git
will treat this case as a conflict, suggesting as a resolution
a submodule commit that is descendant of the conflicting ones,
if one exists.
The ort strategy can take the following options:
ours
This option forces conflicting hunks to be auto-resolved
cleanly by favoring our version. Changes from the other
tree that do not conflict with our side are reflected in
the merge result. For a binary file, the entire contents
are taken from our side.
This should not be confused with the ours merge strategy,
which does not even look at what the other tree contains
at all. It discards everything the other tree did,
declaring our history contains all that happened in it.
theirs
This is the opposite of ours; note that, unlike ours,
there is no theirs merge strategy to confuse this merge
option with.
ignore-space-change, ignore-all-space, ignore-space-at-eol,
ignore-cr-at-eol
Treats lines with the indicated type of whitespace change
as unchanged for the sake of a three-way merge. Whitespace
changes mixed with other changes to a line are not
ignored. See also git-diff(1) -b, -w,
--ignore-space-at-eol, and --ignore-cr-at-eol.
• If their version only introduces whitespace changes to
a line, our version is used;
• If our version introduces whitespace changes but their
version includes a substantial change, their version
is used;
• Otherwise, the merge proceeds in the usual way.
renormalize
This runs a virtual check-out and check-in of all three
stages of any file which needs a three-way merge. This
option is meant to be used when merging branches with
different clean filters or end-of-line normalization
rules. See "Merging branches with differing
checkin/checkout attributes" in gitattributes(5) for
details.
no-renormalize
Disables the renormalize option. This overrides the
merge.renormalize configuration variable.
find-renames[=<n>]
Turn on rename detection, optionally setting the
similarity threshold. This is the default. This overrides
the merge.renames configuration variable. See also
git-diff(1) --find-renames.
rename-threshold=<n>
Deprecated synonym for find-renames=<n>.
no-renames
Turn off rename detection. This overrides the
merge.renames configuration variable. See also git-diff(1)
--no-renames.
histogram
Deprecated synonym for diff-algorithm=histogram.
patience
Deprecated synonym for diff-algorithm=patience.
diff-algorithm=(histogram|minimal|myers|patience)
Use a different diff algorithm while merging, which can
help avoid mismerges that occur due to unimportant
matching lines (such as braces from distinct functions).
See also git-diff(1) --diff-algorithm. Note that ort
defaults to diff-algorithm=histogram, while regular diffs
currently default to the diff.algorithm config setting.
subtree[=<path>]
This option is a more advanced form of subtree strategy,
where the strategy makes a guess on how two trees must be
shifted to match with each other when merging. Instead,
the specified path is prefixed (or stripped from the
beginning) to make the shape of two trees to match.
recursive
This is now a synonym for ort. It was an alternative
implementation until v2.49.0, but was redirected to mean ort
in v2.50.0. The previous recursive strategy was the default
strategy for resolving two heads from Git v0.99.9k until
v2.33.0.
resolve
This can only resolve two heads (i.e. the current branch and
another branch you pulled from) using a 3-way merge algorithm.
It tries to carefully detect criss-cross merge ambiguities. It
does not handle renames.
octopus
This resolves cases with more than two heads, but refuses to
do a complex merge that needs manual resolution. It is
primarily meant to be used for bundling topic branch heads
together. This is the default merge strategy when pulling or
merging more than one branch.
ours
This resolves any number of heads, but the resulting tree of
the merge is always that of the current branch head,
effectively ignoring all changes from all other branches. It
is meant to be used to supersede old development history of
side branches. Note that this is different from the -Xours
option to the ort merge strategy.
subtree
This is a modified ort strategy. When merging trees A and B,
if B corresponds to a subtree of A, B is first adjusted to
match the tree structure of A, instead of reading the trees at
the same level. This adjustment is also done to the common
ancestor tree.
With the strategies that use 3-way merge (including the default,
ort), if a change is made on both branches, but later reverted on
one of the branches, that change will be present in the merged
result; some people find this behavior confusing. It occurs
because only the heads and the merge base are considered when
performing a merge, not the individual commits. The merge
algorithm therefore considers the reverted change as no change at
all, and substitutes the changed version instead.
branch.<name>.mergeOptions
Sets default options for merging into branch <name>. The
syntax and supported options are the same as those of git
merge, but option values containing whitespace characters are
currently not supported.
Everything above this line in this section isn’t included from the
git-config(1) documentation. The content that follows is the same
as what’s found there:
merge.conflictStyle
Specify the style in which conflicted hunks are written out to
working tree files upon merge. The default is "merge", which
shows a <<<<<<< conflict marker, changes made by one side, a
======= marker, changes made by the other side, and then a
>>>>>>> marker. An alternate style, "diff3", adds a |||||||
marker and the original text before the ======= marker. The
"merge" style tends to produce smaller conflict regions than
diff3, both because of the exclusion of the original text, and
because when a subset of lines match on the two sides, they
are just pulled out of the conflict region. Another alternate
style, "zdiff3", is similar to diff3 but removes matching
lines on the two sides from the conflict region when those
matching lines appear near either the beginning or end of a
conflict region.
merge.defaultToUpstream
If merge is called without any commit argument, merge the
upstream branches configured for the current branch by using
their last observed values stored in their remote-tracking
branches. The values of the branch.<current branch>.merge that
name the branches at the remote named by
branch.<current-branch>.remote are consulted, and then they
are mapped via remote.<remote>.fetch to their corresponding
remote-tracking branches, and the tips of these tracking
branches are merged. Defaults to true.
merge.ff
By default, Git does not create an extra merge commit when
merging a commit that is a descendant of the current commit.
Instead, the tip of the current branch is fast-forwarded. When
set to false, this variable tells Git to create an extra merge
commit in such a case (equivalent to giving the --no-ff option
from the command line). When set to only, only such
fast-forward merges are allowed (equivalent to giving the
--ff-only option from the command line).
merge.verifySignatures
If true, this is equivalent to the --verify-signatures command
line option. See git-merge(1) for details.
merge.branchdesc
In addition to branch names, populate the log message with the
branch description text associated with them. Defaults to
false.
merge.log
In addition to branch names, populate the log message with at
most the specified number of one-line descriptions from the
actual commits that are being merged. Defaults to false, and
true is a synonym for 20.
merge.suppressDest
By adding a glob that matches the names of integration
branches to this multi-valued configuration variable, the
default merge message computed for merges into these
integration branches will omit "into <branch-name>" from its
title.
An element with an empty value can be used to clear the list
of globs accumulated from previous configuration entries. When
there is no merge.suppressDest variable defined, the default
value of master is used for backward compatibility.
merge.renameLimit
The number of files to consider in the exhaustive portion of
rename detection during a merge. If not specified, defaults to
the value of diff.renameLimit. If neither merge.renameLimit
nor diff.renameLimit are specified, currently defaults to
7000. This setting has no effect if rename detection is turned
off.
merge.renames
Whether Git detects renames. If set to false, rename detection
is disabled. If set to true, basic rename detection is
enabled. Defaults to the value of diff.renames.
merge.directoryRenames
Whether Git detects directory renames, affecting what happens
at merge time to new files added to a directory on one side of
history when that directory was renamed on the other side of
history. Possible values are:
false
Directory rename detection is disabled, meaning that such
new files will be left behind in the old directory.
true
Directory rename detection is enabled, meaning that such
new files will be moved into the new directory.
conflict
A conflict will be reported for such paths.
If merge.renames is false, merge.directoryRenames is ignored
and treated as false. Defaults to conflict.
merge.renormalize
Tell Git that canonical representation of files in the
repository has changed over time (e.g. earlier commits record
text files with CRLF line endings, but recent ones use LF line
endings). In such a repository, for each file where a
three-way content merge is needed, Git can convert the data
recorded in commits to a canonical form before performing a
merge to reduce unnecessary conflicts. For more information,
see section "Merging branches with differing checkin/checkout
attributes" in gitattributes(5).
merge.stat
What, if anything, to print between ORIG_HEAD and the merge
result at the end of the merge. Possible values are:
false
Show nothing.
true
Show git diff --diffstat --summary ORIG_HEAD.
compact
Show git diff --compact-summary ORIG_HEAD.
but any unrecognised value (e.g., a value added by a future
version of Git) is taken as true instead of triggering an
error. Defaults to true.
merge.autoStash
When set to true, automatically create a temporary stash entry
before the operation begins, and apply it after the operation
ends. This means that you can run merge on a dirty worktree.
However, use with care: the final stash application after a
successful merge might result in non-trivial conflicts. This
option can be overridden by the --no-autostash and --autostash
options of git-merge(1). Defaults to false.
merge.tool
Controls which merge tool is used by git-mergetool(1). The
list below shows the valid built-in values. Any other value is
treated as a custom merge tool and requires that a
corresponding mergetool.<tool>.cmd variable is defined.
merge.guitool
Controls which merge tool is used by git-mergetool(1) when the
-g/--gui flag is specified. The list below shows the valid
built-in values. Any other value is treated as a custom merge
tool and requires that a corresponding mergetool.<guitool>.cmd
variable is defined.
araxis
Use Araxis Merge (requires a graphical session)
bc
Use Beyond Compare (requires a graphical session)
bc3
Use Beyond Compare (requires a graphical session)
bc4
Use Beyond Compare (requires a graphical session)
codecompare
Use Code Compare (requires a graphical session)
deltawalker
Use DeltaWalker (requires a graphical session)
diffmerge
Use DiffMerge (requires a graphical session)
diffuse
Use Diffuse (requires a graphical session)
ecmerge
Use ECMerge (requires a graphical session)
emerge
Use Emacs' Emerge
examdiff
Use ExamDiff Pro (requires a graphical session)
guiffy
Use Guiffy’s Diff Tool (requires a graphical session)
gvimdiff
Use gVim (requires a graphical session) with a custom
layout (see git help mergetool's BACKEND SPECIFIC HINTS
section)
gvimdiff1
Use gVim (requires a graphical session) with a 2 panes
layout (LOCAL and REMOTE)
gvimdiff2
Use gVim (requires a graphical session) with a 3 panes
layout (LOCAL, MERGED and REMOTE)
gvimdiff3
Use gVim (requires a graphical session) where only the
MERGED file is shown
kdiff3
Use KDiff3 (requires a graphical session)
meld
Use Meld (requires a graphical session) with optional auto
merge (see git help mergetool's CONFIGURATION section)
nvimdiff
Use Neovim with a custom layout (see git help mergetool's
BACKEND SPECIFIC HINTS section)
nvimdiff1
Use Neovim with a 2 panes layout (LOCAL and REMOTE)
nvimdiff2
Use Neovim with a 3 panes layout (LOCAL, MERGED and
REMOTE)
nvimdiff3
Use Neovim where only the MERGED file is shown
opendiff
Use FileMerge (requires a graphical session)
p4merge
Use HelixCore P4Merge (requires a graphical session)
smerge
Use Sublime Merge (requires a graphical session)
tkdiff
Use TkDiff (requires a graphical session)
tortoisemerge
Use TortoiseMerge (requires a graphical session)
vimdiff
Use Vim with a custom layout (see git help mergetool's
BACKEND SPECIFIC HINTS section)
vimdiff1
Use Vim with a 2 panes layout (LOCAL and REMOTE)
vimdiff2
Use Vim with a 3 panes layout (LOCAL, MERGED and REMOTE)
vimdiff3
Use Vim where only the MERGED file is shown
vscode
Use Visual Studio Code (requires a graphical session)
winmerge
Use WinMerge (requires a graphical session)
xxdiff
Use xxdiff (requires a graphical session)
merge.verbosity
Controls the amount of output shown by the recursive merge
strategy. Level 0 outputs nothing except a final error message
if conflicts were detected. Level 1 outputs only conflicts, 2
outputs conflicts and file changes. Level 5 and above outputs
debugging information. The default is level 2. Can be
overridden by the GIT_MERGE_VERBOSITY environment variable.
merge.<driver>.name
Defines a human-readable name for a custom low-level merge
driver. See gitattributes(5) for details.
merge.<driver>.driver
Defines the command that implements a custom low-level merge
driver. See gitattributes(5) for details.
merge.<driver>.recursive
Names a low-level merge driver to be used when performing an
internal merge between common ancestors. See gitattributes(5)
for details.
git-fmt-merge-msg(1), git-pull(1), gitattributes(5), git-reset(1),
git-diff(1), git-ls-files(1), git-add(1), git-rm(1),
git-mergetool(1)
Part of the git(1) suite
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(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-branch(1), git-cherry-pick(1), git-commit(1), git-config(1), git-diff(1), git-fmt-merge-msg(1), git-merge(1), git-merge-base(1), git-merge-tree(1), git-pull(1), git-revert(1), stg-repair(1), githooks(5), giteveryday(7), gitglossary(7), gitworkflows(7)
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