Understanding Git conflict markersEdit

Created , updated

When looking at Git conflict markers it can sometimes be confusing which half of the conflicting section belongs to which branch:

<<<<<<< HEAD
foo
=======
bar
>>>>>>> cb1abc6bd98cfc84317f8aa95a7662815417802d
  • the top half is the branch you are merging into (ie. the "ours" changes)
  • the bottom half is from the commit that you are trying to merge in (ie. the "theirs" changes)

What this means in practice if you are doing something like git pull (which is equivalent to a git fetch followed by a git merge) is:

  • the top half shows your local changes (again, "ours")
  • the bottom half shows the remote changes, which you are trying to merge in (again, "theirs)

On the other hand, if you are doing something like git rebase origin/master, you are effectively trying to merge your local changes "into" the upstream changes (by replaying them on top); that means:

  • the top half shows the upstream changes (somewhat confusingly, still called "ours")
  • the bottom half shows your local changes, which you are trying to merge in (again, somewhat confusingly, still called "theirs").

Note the "ours"/"theirs" terminology is useful to know because if you ever what to just resolve a conflict in favor of one side or the other, you can run these commands:

# During a merge into a topic branch:
git checkout --ours some/file       # file from the topic branch wins
git checkout --theirs some/file     # file from the upstream branch wins

# During a rebase of a topic branch:
git checkout --ours some/file       # file from the upstream branch wins
git checkout --theirs some/file     # file from the topic branch wins

See also