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gitrebase

Why do I get a conflict with `git rebase -p`

I'm trying to understand how git rebase handles merges. I thought that with -p, it would be able to rebase conflicting merge that would have already been resolved. But it seams like it doesn't.

Here is an example to illustrate the issue:

git init
touch a && git add . && git commit -m 'first commit'
git branch b
git branch c
echo 'a' >> a && git add . && git commit -m a

git checkout b
echo 'b' >> a && git add . && git commit -m b

git checkout master
git merge b
echo ab > a
git add .
git commit

git checkout c
touch c && git add . && git commit -m c

git checkout master
git rebase -p c

Here I get a conflict applying the merge commit. Can someone explain to me why ?

Solution

  • No, -p just keeps the merge commits in the history instead of flattening them. The docs explicitly say that this doesn't help with manual merging:

    (from the man page)

    Merge conflict resolutions or manual amendments to merge commits are not preserved.