Subject: Status of conflicted files resolved with rerere

From: Magnus Bäck <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 23:28:28 +0200

I played around with git rerere today and was surprised by the results.
When a conflict has been resolved automatically by rerere, the file
isn't added to the index like other files are where Git just used one of
the regular merge resolution algorithms. What's worse, if git mergetool
is invoked -- which is what I normally do when git merge needs help --
it has no idea that the file actually has been merged already, and
launches the merge tool with the three files involved in the merge. If
the user hasn't been paying attention to each line of the git merge
output (stating the files who were automatically resolved) it's easy to
trash rerere's work.

Would it make sense for git merge to add rerere'd files (where all hunks
were recognized and resolved) to the index automatically? That would
make it possible for the user to run git mergetool without reading every
single line of output from previous commands just to figure out which
files should be added to the index straight off and which files require
merging.

For users resolving conflicts by editing the file and fiddling with the
<<<<<<<<< marks etc such a change wouldn't make that big difference, but
for mergetool users it seems like a quite useful improvement. Or is
there something I'm failing to grasp here? This is on Git 1.7.0.3 by the
way.

-- 
Magnus Bäck                      Opinions are my own and do not necessarily
SW Configuration Manager         represent the ones of my employer, etc.
Sony Ericsson