git-merge(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | PRE-MERGE CHECKS | FAST-FORWARD MERGE | TRUE MERGE | MERGING TAG | HOW CONFLICTS ARE PRESENTED | HOW TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS | EXAMPLES | MERGE STRATEGIES | CONFIGURATION | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

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

NAME         top

       git-merge - Join two or more development histories together

SYNOPSIS         top

       git merge [-n] [--stat] [--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)

DESCRIPTION         top

       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 (C).

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

       The second 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.

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

OPTIONS         top

       --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[<keyid>], --gpg-sign[=<keyid>], --no-gpg-sign
           GPG-sign the resulting merge commit. The keyid 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.

       --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 special 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 and will not 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.

PRE-MERGE CHECKS         top

       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."

FAST-FORWARD MERGE         top

       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         top

       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 special ref 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.

MERGING TAG         top

       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         top

       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.

HOW TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS         top

       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.

EXAMPLES         top

       •   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         top

       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.

           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 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.

           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>.

           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 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 can detect and handle merges
           involving renames. It does not make use of detected copies.
           This was the default strategy for resolving two heads from
           Git v0.99.9k until v2.33.0.

           The recursive strategy takes the same options as ort.
           However, there are three additional options that ort ignores
           (not documented above) that are potentially useful with the
           recursive strategy:

           patience
               Deprecated synonym for diff-algorithm=patience.

           diff-algorithm=[patience|minimal|histogram|myers]
               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
               specifically uses diff-algorithm=histogram, while
               recursive defaults to the diff.algorithm config setting.

           no-renames
               Turn off rename detection. This overrides the
               merge.renames configuration variable. See also
               git-diff(1) --no-renames.

       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 recursive 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.

CONFIGURATION         top

       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. If merge.directoryRenames is set to "false",
           directory rename detection is disabled, meaning that such new
           files will be left behind in the old directory. If set to
           "true", directory rename detection is enabled, meaning that
           such new files will be moved into the new directory. If set
           to "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, 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.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

           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.

SEE ALSO         top

       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         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:https://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http:https://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  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 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20                   GIT-MERGE(1)

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