Sometimes, when I do git pull origin master from a local branch, I get merge conflicts like:
<<<<<<HEAD
======
>>>>>>xxxxxx
How to avoid that ? Maybe it is due to some white spaces, so I tried to put a .gitattributes file containing * -whitespace but that didn't solve the problem.
In this case, you have white-space differences. Git considers whitespace differences significant. (If this were not the case, well ... imagine maintaining a program written in Whitespace, for instance.)
Your comment:
... followed by
git merge -s recursive -Xignore-space-change origin/master. This worked and I got no confict this time.
confirms that the conflicts were merely with whitespace. The -X argument—I call these extended arguments, with X standing for eXtended)—ignore-space-change tells Git that, during the merge, if your change and their change are the same except for whitespace, this is not really a conflict.
The precise rules for these four extended options are described in the documentation:
ignore-space-change
ignore-all-space
ignore-space-at-eol
ignore-cr-at-eolTreats lines with the indicated type of whitespace change as unchanged for the sake of a three-way merge. Whitespace changes mixed with other changes to a line are not ignored. See also git-diff[1]
-b,-w,--ignore-space-at-eol, and--ignore-cr-at-eol.
If their version only introduces whitespace changes to a line, our version is used;
If our version introduces whitespace changes but their version includes a substantial change, their version is used;
Otherwise, the merge proceeds in the usual way.
Note that you can usually spell this command more simply as:
git merge -X ignore-space-change
The -s recursive is the default, and origin/master is presumably already set as the upstream of your current branch master so that this too is the default.
(The space between -X and its argument is optional, but I prefer to use it.)