On Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 12:40:21PM +0100, Philip Oakley wrote: > One thing that catches me, and I think others, is how the 'strategies' > work. IIUC a merge will look at each line in the diff, and accept any > change on either side that has no conflicts within the context zone. > It's only when there are changes from both sides that the selection > strategy kicks in. But it is difficult to describe, so it's easy to be > confused. I think you might be confusing the "ours" strategy (which takes the tree state of the first parent entirely) with the "ours" (and "theirs") options of the merge-recursive (or ort) strategy. You can see the difference with: git init repo cd repo echo base >file git add file git commit -m base echo main >file git add file git commit -m main git checkout -b side HEAD^ echo side >file echo unrelated >another git add file another git commit -m side git checkout -b strategy-ours main git merge -s ours side git checkout -b option-ours main git merge -X ours side The strategy-ours merge will drop "another", because it was not in the first parent. Whereas option-ours will keep it, preferring the first parent only for the conflict in "file". You could construct a similar example where instead of a second file, there's enough content in "file" that some of it does not conflict. -Peff
