GIT-RERERE(1) Git Manual GIT-RERERE(1)

NAME

git-rerere - Reuse recorded resolution of conflicted merges

SYNOPSIS

git rerere [clear | forget <pathspec>... | diff | status | remaining | gc]

DESCRIPTION

In a workflow employing relatively long lived topic branches, the
developer sometimes needs to resolve the same conflicts over and over
again until the topic branches are done (either merged to the
"release" branch, or sent out and accepted upstream).

This command assists the developer in this process by recording
conflicted automerge results and corresponding hand resolve results
on the initial manual merge, and applying previously recorded hand
resolutions to their corresponding automerge results.

Note

You need to set the configuration variable rerere.enabled in
order to enable this command.

COMMANDS

Normally, git rerere is run without arguments or user-intervention.
However, it has several commands that allow it to interact with its
working state.

clear
Reset the metadata used by rerere if a merge resolution is to be
aborted. Calling git am [--skip|--abort] or git rebase
[--skip|--abort] will automatically invoke this command.

forget <pathspec>
Reset the conflict resolutions which rerere has recorded for the
current conflict in <pathspec>.

diff
Display diffs for the current state of the resolution. It is
useful for tracking what has changed while the user is resolving
conflicts. Additional arguments are passed directly to the system
diff command installed in PATH.

status
Print paths with conflicts whose merge resolution rerere will
record.

remaining
Print paths with conflicts that have not been autoresolved by
rerere. This includes paths whose resolutions cannot be tracked
by rerere, such as conflicting submodules.

gc
Prune records of conflicted merges that occurred a long time ago.
By default, unresolved conflicts older than 15 days and resolved
conflicts older than 60 days are pruned. These defaults are
controlled via the gc.rerereUnresolved and gc.rerereResolved
configuration variables respectively.

DISCUSSION

When your topic branch modifies an overlapping area that your master
branch (or upstream) touched since your topic branch forked from it,
you may want to test it with the latest master, even before your
topic branch is ready to be pushed upstream:

o---*---o topic
/
o---o---o---*---o---o master

For such a test, you need to merge master and topic somehow. One way
to do it is to pull master into the topic branch:

$ git switch topic
$ git merge master

o---*---o---+ topic
/ /
o---o---o---*---o---o master

The commits marked with * touch the same area in the same file; you
need to resolve the conflicts when creating the commit marked with +.
Then you can test the result to make sure your work-in-progress still
works with what is in the latest master.

After this test merge, there are two ways to continue your work on
the topic. The easiest is to build on top of the test merge commit +,
and when your work in the topic branch is finally ready, pull the
topic branch into master, and/or ask the upstream to pull from you.
By that time, however, the master or the upstream might have been
advanced since the test merge +, in which case the final commit graph
would look like this:

$ git switch topic
$ git merge master
$ ... work on both topic and master branches
$ git switch master
$ git merge topic

o---*---o---+---o---o topic
/ / \
o---o---o---*---o---o---o---o---+ master

When your topic branch is long-lived, however, your topic branch
would end up having many such "Merge from master" commits on it,
which would unnecessarily clutter the development history. Readers of
the Linux kernel mailing list may remember that Linus complained
about such too frequent test merges when a subsystem maintainer asked
to pull from a branch full of "useless merges".

As an alternative, to keep the topic branch clean of test merges, you
could blow away the test merge, and keep building on top of the tip
before the test merge:

$ git switch topic
$ git merge master
$ git reset --hard HEAD^ ;# rewind the test merge
$ ... work on both topic and master branches
$ git switch master
$ git merge topic

o---*---o-------o---o topic
/ \
o---o---o---*---o---o---o---o---+ master

This would leave only one merge commit when your topic branch is
finally ready and merged into the master branch. This merge would
require you to resolve the conflict, introduced by the commits marked
with *. However, this conflict is often the same conflict you
resolved when you created the test merge you blew away. git rerere
helps you resolve this final conflicted merge using the information
from your earlier hand resolve.

Running the git rerere command immediately after a conflicted
automerge records the conflicted working tree files, with the usual
conflict markers <<<<<<<, =======, and >>>>>>> in them. Later, after
you are done resolving the conflicts, running git rerere again will
record the resolved state of these files. Suppose you did this when
you created the test merge of master into the topic branch.

Next time, after seeing the same conflicted automerge, running git
rerere will perform a three-way merge between the earlier conflicted
automerge, the earlier manual resolution, and the current conflicted
automerge. If this three-way merge resolves cleanly, the result is
written out to your working tree file, so you do not have to manually
resolve it. Note that git rerere leaves the index file alone, so you
still need to do the final sanity checks with git diff (or git diff
-c) and git add when you are satisfied.

As a convenience measure, git merge automatically invokes git rerere
upon exiting with a failed automerge and git rerere records the hand
resolve when it is a new conflict, or reuses the earlier hand resolve
when it is not. git commit also invokes git rerere when committing a
merge result. What this means is that you do not have to do anything
special yourself (besides enabling the rerere.enabled config
variable).

In our example, when you do the test merge, the manual resolution is
recorded, and it will be reused when you do the actual merge later
with the updated master and topic branch, as long as the recorded
resolution is still applicable.

The information git rerere records is also used when running git
rebase. After blowing away the test merge and continuing development
on the topic branch:

o---*---o-------o---o topic
/
o---o---o---*---o---o---o---o master

$ git rebase master topic

o---*---o-------o---o topic
/
o---o---o---*---o---o---o---o master

you could run git rebase master topic, to bring yourself up to date
before your topic is ready to be sent upstream. This would result in
falling back to a three-way merge, and it would conflict the same way
as the test merge you resolved earlier. git rerere will be run by git
rebase to help you resolve this conflict.

[NOTE] git rerere relies on the conflict markers in the file to
detect the conflict. If the file already contains lines that look the
same as lines with conflict markers, git rerere may fail to record a
conflict resolution. To work around this, the conflict-marker-size
setting in gitattributes(5) can be used.

GIT

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Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-RERERE(1)