I <3 git. You <3 git.

We’re all coding blazing fast…until you run into a merge conflict

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~/silly-project (master): g merge silly_branch
Auto-merging README.markdown
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in README.markdown
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.

?! git sucks! You try:

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git mergetool

which opens opendiff on most macs, and gvimdiff on linux. vimdiff does not make any sense in this case because it specializes in 2-way-merges, not 3-way-merges. opendiff is an ok tool, but it has a GUI, which is soooooo not Vim.

Here’s what you need to do (heavily inspired from Drew Neil’s screencast):

• install the fugitive.vim plugin (hell, get janus while you’re at it)

• vim README.markdown (instead of using the mergetool, just open the conflicted file with Vim)

• :Gdiff (this opens the target/master copy and the merge/branch copy in addition to an attempt at a merged file – that’s what you opened above)

• In the middle file (future merged file), you can navigate between conflicts with ]c and [c

• Choose which version you want to keep with :diffget //2 or :diffget //3 (the //2 and //3 are unique identifiers for the target/master copy and the merge/branch copy file names)

• :diffupdate (to remove leftover spacing issues)

• :only (once you’re done reviewing all conflicts, this shows only the middle/merged file)

• :wq (save and quit)

• git add .

• git commit -m “Merge resolved”

• if you were trying to do a git pull when you ran into merge conflicts, type git rebase –continue

Hope this helps.

[EDIT] Check out Wes’s Blog post on how to integrate git mergetool with the steps above.