#Sublime merge conflicts series#

('ours') or #3 ('theirs') for unmerged paths. When checking out paths from the index, check out stage #2

The documentation for git-checkout was further clarified in Git >=2.5.1 as per f303016 commit: git rebase) is actually taking your work on hold (which is theirs) in order to replay onto the canonical/main history which is ours, because we're rebasing our changes as third-party work. This may appear to be swapped to people who are not aware that doing rebasing (e.g. The ' theirs' refers to the version that holds the work in order to be rebased (changes to be replayed onto the current branch). The ' ours' in Git is referring to the original working branch which has authoritative/canonical part of git history. And: see VonC's answer to another question, where git mergetool introduces yet more names for these, calling them 'local' and 'remote'! I've never come up with a better name for these, though. Which probably does not help with any of the confusion. well, not unless you copy it into the work tree before you start.Īlso, by the way, this applies to all uses of ours and theirs, but some are on a whole file level ( -s ours for a merge strategy git checkout -ours during a merge conflict) and some are on a piece-by-piece basis ( -X ours or -X theirs during a -s recursive merge). But as you note, it's not actually in place at the time, so it should not have an effect here. The target branch is the anonymous branch, and the merge-from branch is your original (pre-rebase) branch: so '-ours' means the anonymous one rebase is building while '-theirs' means 'our branch being rebased'.Īs for the gitattributes entry: it could have an effect: 'ours' really means 'use stage #2' internally.

#Sublime merge conflicts series#

The reason the 'ours' and 'theirs' notions get swapped around during rebase is that rebase works by doing a series of cherry-picks, into an anonymous branch (detached HEAD mode). Stage #1 is the common ancestor of the files, stage #2 is the target-branch version, and stage #3 is the version you are merging from. I think it's little help here, but in fact, in gitrevisions syntax, you can refer to an individual path in the index by number, during a conflicted merge git show :1:README In which case there are no branch names involved! Worse, you can even do this: git checkout 7777777 # detach HEAD For instance, instead of the above, you might do: git checkout ours While using the actual branch name might be pretty cool, it falls apart in more complex cases. Ultimately, during a git merge, the 'ours' branch refers to the branch you're merging into: git checkout merge-into-oursĪnd the 'theirs' branch refers to the (single) branch you're merging: git merge from-theirsĪnd here 'ours' and 'theirs' makes some sense, as even though 'theirs' is probably yours anyway, 'theirs' is not the one you were on when you ran git merge. To make things worse, the whole ours/theirs stuff switches roles (becomes backwards) when you are doing a rebase. I suspect you're confused here because it's fundamentally confusing. gitattributes is not checked out, will it even have an effect? If it does have an effect, since master is now 'ours', then what will happen? Now I checkout and point HEAD to master then merge in test. gitattributes file: config.xml merge=ours Lets say in test branch I have the following.

The most confusing part to me is if I specify in a specific branch's. Or just use the branch name (instead of saying 'ours' just say 'local master's' or such)? In a merge conflict is 'ours' always the upper of the two versions displayed?ĭoes 'ours' always refer to the branch that HEAD was pointing to when the merge began? If so then why not use a clear possessive reference like 'current branch's' instead of using a possessive pronoun like 'ours' that is referentially ambiguous (since both branches are technically ours)?

What does 'ours' and 'theirs' mean in git when merging my branch into my other branch? This might sound like too basic of a question, but I have searched for answers and I am more confused now than before.