Force Git to always choose the newer version during a merge?

git merge conflict
bartek picture bartek · Nov 27, 2012 · Viewed 85k times · Source

Let's assume I merge git and there is a merge conflict.

My question is: how can I force git to always choose the newer version of code in conflict so I won't need to resolve the conflict by hand?

Answer

Renato Zannon picture Renato Zannon · Nov 27, 2012

It is not exactly the "newer" version, but you can tell git to always prefer the version on the current branch using git merge branch -X ours, or to prefer the version of the branch being merged, using git merge branch -X theirs.

From man git-merge:

ours:

This option forces conflicting hunks to be auto-resolved cleanly by favoring our version. Changes from the other tree that do not conflict with our side are reflected to the merge result. For a binary file, the entire contents are taken from our side.

theirs:

This is the opposite of "ours".

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