Re: [PATCH 2/7] [doc] git-merge: link to new merge conflicts guide

On Fri, Sep 25, 2026, at 12:36 PM, D. Ben Knoble wrote:

Hi Julia,

On Thu, Sep 24, 2026 at 10:46 AM Julia Evans via GitGitGadget
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

From: Julia Evans <redacted>

All of the info about merge conflicts has been moved to the new guide

quoted

Among the changes made to the common ancestor's version,
-non-overlapping ones (that is, you changed an area of the file while the
-other side left that area intact, or vice versa) are incorporated in the
-final result verbatim.  When both sides made changes to the same area,
-however, Git cannot randomly pick one side over the other, and asks you to
-resolve it by leaving what both sides did to that area.

quoted

- * Look at the diffs from each branch. `git log --merge -p <path>`
-   will show diffs first for the `HEAD` version and then the
-   `MERGE_HEAD` version.

I think these are both valuable pieces of information we have lost in
the new guide (unless I misremember just having read patch 1 :).

The first explains a bit more about what a conflict *is*. Maybe that's
old-hat nowadays, but I think it could be nice to keep a statement
about why conflicts exist.

Will think about this!

The second is a very useful way to get more context to help resolve
conflicts! I have an alias "conflict = log --oneline --graph
--left-right --boundary --merge" for a similar purpose, and I think
the new guide should help folks discover --merge. Often I can get a
better sense of how to resolve conflicts by comparing the original
changes on each side, or I might at least know who to ask about what
to do.

Thanks, I meant to flag this: the reason I deleted it was really
just that I couldn't understand what `git log --merge -p <path>`  did
from the documentation and so I removed it until I could figure it out.
I thought that `--merge` meant that it had something to do with merge
commits, but upon further investigation it looks like that's not true, and
that `--merges` is related to merge commits, `--merge` is something
totally different which is relevant any time there's a conflict

My best guess now is that it would make sense to include this
under "Tools to get more context". Maybe something like this:

`git log --merge -p <filename>`  will print out all commits which
  caused the merge conflict for `<filename>`, and the diff
 of how they changed the file. 

("which caused the merge conflict for" is a little more vague, but
I'm trying to convey the intent, and hopefully folks can look at
`man git log` if they want to know the specifics)

This does sound really useful.