Found a swap file by the name

Question

When I try to merge my branch with a remote branch:

git merge feature/remote_branch

I got this message:

E325: ATTENTION
Found a swap file by the name ".git/.MERGE_MSG.swp"
          owned by: xxxxxx   dated: Mon Nov 12 23:17:40 2012
         file name: ~xxxxxx/Desktop/My-ios-App/.git/MERGE_MSG
          modified: YES
         user name: xxxxxx   host name: unknown-b8-8d-12-22-27-72.lan
        process ID: 1639
While opening file ".git/MERGE_MSG"
             dated: Tue Nov 13 14:06:48 2012
      NEWER than swap file!

(1) Another program may be editing the same file.
    If this is the case, be careful not to end up with two
    different instances of the same file when making changes.
    Quit, or continue with caution.

(2) An edit session for this file crashed.
    If this is the case, use ":recover" or "vim -r .git/MERGE_MSG"
    to recover the changes (see ":help recovery").
    If you did this already, delete the swap file ".git/.MERGE_MSG.swp"
    to avoid this message.

Swap file ".git/.MERGE_MSG.swp" already exists!
[O]pen Read-Only, (E)dit anyway, (R)ecover, (D)elete it, (Q)uit, (A)bort:

How to deal with this?

Answer 1

Looks like you have an open git commit or git merge going on, and an editor is still open editing the commit message.

Two choices:

1. Find the session and finish it (preferable).
2. Delete the .swp file (if you're sure the other git session has gone away).

Clarification from comments:

• The session is the editing session.
• You can see what .swp is being used by entering the command :sw within the editing session, but generally it's a hidden file in the same directory as the file you are using, with a .swp file suffix (i.e. ~/myfile.txt would be ~/.myfile.txt.swp).