Question

When Git detects a conflict during merge, the default behaviour is to fill the file with <<< >>> === markers.

This is OK most of the time, but sometimes I’d like to resolve conflicts differently and I’d just like Git to create distinct files:

• original version,
• changed version A,
• changed version B.

How to achieve that?

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If there’s no simple command to create those files in one go (which is somewhat surprising), maybe there is a way to extend Git so that it would do it? A custom mergetool or something? Just an idea.

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Solution:

I’ve settled for a variant of @Karl Bielefeldt’s answer:

savefiles.sh

#!bash
BASE=$1
LOCAL=$2
REMOTE=$3
MERGED=$4

cp "$BASE" "$MERGED.git_BASE"
cp "$LOCAL" "$MERGED.git_LOCAL"
cp "$REMOTE" "$MERGED.git_REMOTE"

# never mark the conflict as merged
exit 1 

config

mergetool.savefiles.cmd=/path/to/savefiles.sh $BASE $LOCAL $REMOTE $MERGED
mergetool.savefiles.trustexitcode=true

Answer 1

Create a file called savefiles.sh with the following contents:

#!/usr/bin/bash

cp $1 /path/to/BASE
cp $2 /path/to/LOCAL
cp $3 /path/to/REMOTE

Execute the following command inside your repository:

git config mergetool.savefiles.cmd "/path/to/savefiles.sh \$BASE \$LOCAL \$REMOTE"

Add a --global if you want to change it for other than this repository.

Then to run this custom mergetool, use:

git mergetool --tool=savefiles