Question

In Bazaar if you have a conflict in foo.html it will make an additional 3 files

foo.html.BASE
foo.html.OTHER
foo.html.THIS

Then you can

diff -Naur foo.html.BASE foo.html.OTHER

Comparing the common basis with the other set of changes is really helpful because it tells you what, exactly, they changed, which helps answer why they did it. For example, if all they changed was white space, you can confidently use your own change.

How do I accomplish this in git?

Answer 1

git doesn’t store the actual full-copy versions of the three files in your working directory. Instead, it stores a single file that has conflict markers placed in it. However, you can still get at those versions using the :<stage>:<filename> syntax (to git tools – the files don’t actually exist, so, e.g. normal diff won’t see them). So, for example, you can run git diff :1:foo.html :2:foo.html to see the differences between BASE and THIS. Stage 3 would be your OTHER version. You could also use git mergetool foo.html or git difftool foo.html. If you really need to use a non-git tool on them, you can do this:

git show :1:foo.html > foo.html.BASE
git show :2:foo.html > foo.html.THIS
git show :3:foo.html > foo.html.OTHER
diff ......