If the contents of a file initially are: one three and on branch A there is a commit, removing the blank line: one three and on branch B there is a commit, adding 'two': one two three Normally, if you try to merge A into B (or B into A), git recognizes a decision needs to be made between removing the second line or add "two" to the second line. It would be convenient to have a merge strategy that defaults to the latter in cases where the removed line was a blank line (or a line containing only whitespace) ...something like -Xignore-blank-line-removals.