On Sat, Dec 4, 2021 at 5:20 AM Michael McClimon [off-list ref] wrote:

There is a minimal reproducer available at
https://github.com/mmcclimon/git-merge-problem-demo. Fetch all the branches
there. The main branch contains a directory (dir1) with a single file
(file.txt), plus a symlink (dir2), which links to dir1. branch1 replaces this
symlink with a copy of the files that were linked to. (This was accomplished
with: rm dir2; cp -r dir1 dir2.) branch2 and branch3 do not touch this
directory at all.

Merging these three branches fails:

$ git merge branch1 branch2 branch3
Fast-forwarding to: branch1
Trying simple merge with branch2
Simple merge did not work, trying automatic merge.
Trying simple merge with branch3
error: Entry 'dir2/file.txt' not uptodate. Cannot merge.
Merge with strategy octopus failed.

The order here matters! Here is every permutation (1 here is the symlink
change) to git merge; only the first two fail, all the others work.

1 2 3   FAIL
1 3 2   FAIL
2 1 3   PASS
2 3 1   PASS
3 1 2   PASS
3 2 1   PASS
1 2     PASS
2 1     PASS
2 3     PASS
3 2     PASS
1 3     PASS
3 1     PASS

I'm not a Git contributor (since ~10 years ago) but I was curious and
tried your repro myself. Thanks for the very simple instructions.
Maybe it's useful to see what the error is when you use the octopus
strategy to merge only two commits:

$ git checkout origin/branch1
$ git merge -s octopus origin/branch2
Trying really trivial in-index merge...
error: Merge requires file-level merging
Nope.
Merge with strategy octopus failed.

That "Merge requires file-level merging" is surprising but maybe the
"really trivial" is the explanation :) My *guess* is the answer is
that the octopus strategy is really old and should be rewritten using
the new "ort" strategy (or maybe be integrated into it). I'm afraid I
can't think of a workaround for you (other than trying different
permutations until it works).