Hi. This is also described in this SO question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58767528/how-to-specify-a-git-merge-ours-strategy-with-gitattributes-for-deleted-files Our proprietary IDE generates theme-cache/web/theme.compiled.css and the contents are different on different machines. This file was supposed to be in .gitignore, but it slipped into the repo. I was trying to remove the file, but other developers silently re-introduce it into the repo. Here's what happens: - The proprietary IDE re-generates the file and makes a local commit. - The IDE does "pull --rebase" which results in a "deleted by us" conflict - The IDE immediately re-generates the file, clearing the conflicted state - Even though it's in .gitignore, the file remains under version control because of the cherry-pick by rebase I was hoping that adding a certain merge= attribute for this file would help, but apparently it only considered when two files are merged, not when one is deleted.