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

NAME
       git-merge - Join two or more development histories together

SYNOPSIS
       git merge [-n] [--stat] [--no-commit] [--squash] [--[no-]edit]
	       [-s <strategy>] [-X <strategy-option>] [-S[<keyid>]]
	       [--[no-]rerere-autoupdate] [-m <msg>] [<commit>...]
       git merge <msg> HEAD <commit>...
       git merge --abort


DESCRIPTION
       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.

		     A---B---C topic
		    /	      \
	       D---E---F---G---H master

       The second syntax (<msg> HEAD <commit>...) is supported for historical
       reasons. Do not use it from the command line or in new scripts. It is
       the same as git merge -m <msg> <commit>....

       The third syntax ("git merge --abort") can only be run after the merge
       has resulted in conflicts. 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.

OPTIONS
       --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 but pretend the merge failed and
	   do not autocommit, to give the user a chance to inspect and further
	   tweak the merge result before committing.

       --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.

       --ff
	   When the merge resolves as a fast-forward, only update the branch
	   pointer, without creating a merge commit. This is the default
	   behavior.

       --no-ff
	   Create a merge commit even when the merge resolves as a
	   fast-forward. This is the default behaviour when merging an
	   annotated (and possibly signed) tag.

       --ff-only
	   Refuse to merge and exit with a non-zero status unless the current
	   HEAD is already up-to-date or the merge can be resolved as a
	   fast-forward.

       --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.

       --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.

       --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 or move the HEAD, nor 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.

       -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 (git
	   merge-recursive when merging a single head, git merge-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 commits being merged have good and trusted GPG
	   signatures and abort the merge in case they do not.

       --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.

       -S[<keyid>], --gpg-sign[=<keyid>]
	   GPG-sign the resulting merge commit.

       -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.

       --[no-]rerere-autoupdate
	   Allow the rerere mechanism to update the index with the result of
	   auto-conflict resolution if possible.

       --abort
	   Abort the current conflict resolution process, and try to
	   reconstruct the pre-merge state.

	   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.

       <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, and if
	   merge.defaultToUpstream configuration variable is set, 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.

PRE-MERGE CHECKS
       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. (One exception is when the changed
       index entries are in the state that would result from the merge
       already.)

       If all named commits are already ancestors of HEAD, git merge will exit
       early with the message "Already up-to-date."

FAST-FORWARD MERGE
       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.

TRUE MERGE
       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" program; i.e. 3-way merge results with familiar conflict
	   markers <<<===>>>.

	5. 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.

MERGING TAG
       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

HOW CONFLICTS ARE PRESENTED
       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.
	   <<<<<<< 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 "diff3". 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
	   Conflict resolution is hard;
	   let's go shopping.
	   |||||||
	   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.

HOW TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS
       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 to seal the deal.

       You can work through the conflict with a number of tools:

       ·   Use a mergetool.  git mergetool to launch a graphical mergetool
	   which will work you through the merge.

       ·   Look at the diffs.  git diff will show a three-way diff,
	   highlighting changes from both the HEAD and MERGE_HEAD versions.

       ·   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.

EXAMPLES
       ·   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.

MERGE STRATEGIES
       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.

       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 and is
	   considered generally safe and fast.

       recursive
	   This 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
	   mis-merges by tests done on actual merge commits taken from Linux
	   2.6 kernel development history. Additionally this can detect and
	   handle merges involving renames. This is the default merge strategy
	   when pulling or merging one branch.

	   The recursive 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 to 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.

	   patience
	       With this option, merge-recursive spends a little extra time to
	       avoid mismerges that sometimes occur due to unimportant
	       matching lines (e.g., braces from distinct functions). Use this
	       when the branches to be merged have diverged wildly. See also
	       git-diff(1)--patience.

	   diff-algorithm=[patience|minimal|histogram|myers]
	       Tells merge-recursive to use a different diff algorithm, 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.

	   ignore-space-change, ignore-all-space, ignore-space-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, and --ignore-space-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 a file when resolving 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.

	   rename-threshold=<n>
	       Controls the similarity threshold used for rename detection.
	       See also git-diff(1)-M.

	   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.

       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 recursive
	   merge strategy.

       subtree
	   This is a modified recursive 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.

CONFIGURATION
       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.

       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.

       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.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.renameLimit
	   The number of files to consider when performing rename detection
	   during a merge; if not specified, defaults to the value of
	   diff.renameLimit.

       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, 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
	   Whether to print the diffstat between ORIG_HEAD and the merge
	   result at the end of the merge. True by default.

       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.

	   ·   araxis

	   ·   bc3

	   ·   codecompare

	   ·   deltawalker

	   ·   diffmerge

	   ·   diffuse

	   ·   ecmerge

	   ·   emerge

	   ·   gvimdiff

	   ·   gvimdiff2

	   ·   kdiff3

	   ·   meld

	   ·   opendiff

	   ·   p4merge

	   ·   tkdiff

	   ·   tortoisemerge

	   ·   vimdiff

	   ·   vimdiff2

	   ·   xxdiff

       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.

       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.

SEE ALSO
       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)

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite

Git 1.8.5.2			  01/09/2014			  GIT-MERGE(1)
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