git-merge-index - Man Page

• Merge all files needing resolution using the standard helper: git merge-index git-merge-one-file -a
• Merge a specific file: git merge-index git-merge-one-file -- path/to/file
• Merge multiple files, continuing on failures: git merge-index -o git-merge-one-file -- path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...
• Quietly merge all files with a custom program: git merge-index -q merge_program -a
• Inspect merge inputs for a file using cat: git merge-index cat -- path

tldr.sh

git merge-index [-o] [-q] <merge-program> (-a | ( [--] <file>​...) )

This looks up the <file>(s) in the index and, if there are any merge entries, passes the SHA-1 hash for those files as arguments 1, 2, 3 (empty argument if no file), and <file> as argument 4​. File modes for the three files are passed as arguments 5, 6 and 7​.

--

Do not interpret any more arguments as options​.

-a

Run merge against all files in the index that need merging​.

-o

Instead of stopping at the first failed merge, do all of them in one shot - continue with merging even when previous merges returned errors, and only return the error code after all the merges​.

-q

Do not complain about a failed merge program (a merge program failure usually indicates conflicts during the merge)​. This is for porcelains which might want to emit custom messages​.

If git merge-index is called with multiple <file>s (or -a) then it processes them in turn only stopping if merge returns a non-zero exit code​.

Typically this is run with a script calling Git’s imitation of the merge command from the RCS package​.

A sample script called git merge-one-file is included in the distribution​.

ALERT ALERT ALERT! The Git "merge object order" is different from the RCS merge program merge object order​. In the above ordering, the original is first​. But the argument order to the 3-way merge program merge is to have the original in the middle​. Don’t ask me why​.

Examples:

torvalds@ppc970:~/merge-test> git merge-index cat MM
This is MM from the original tree​.              # original
This is modified MM in the branch A​.            # merge1
This is modified MM in the branch B​.            # merge2
This is modified MM in the branch B​.            # current contents

or

torvalds@ppc970:~/merge-test> git merge-index cat AA MM
cat: : No such file or directory
This is added AA in the branch A​.
This is added AA in the branch B​.
This is added AA in the branch B​.
fatal: merge program failed

where the latter example shows how git merge-index will stop trying to merge once anything has returned an error (i​.e​., cat returned an error for the AA file, because it didn’t exist in the original, and thus git merge-index didn’t even try to merge the MM thing)​.

Part of the git(1) suite