Git – how to force merge conflict and manual merge on selected file

by

Option 5, a custom merge driver, is probably the way to get closest to what you want. It is surprisingly easy to do. Below is an example of one that I think should get you pretty close to the behavior you desire.

First, create a merge driver script called merge-and-verify-driver. Make it executable and put it in a suitable location (you may want to consider checking this script into the repo, even, since the repo’s config file is going to depend on it). Git is going to execute this shell script to perform the merge of the sensitive files:

#!/bin/bash
git merge-file "${1}" "${2}" "${3}"
exit 1

This just does the default merge behavior that Git itself normally does. The key difference is that the script always returns non-zero (to indicate that there was a conflict, even if the merge was actually resolved without conflicts).

Next, you need to tell Git about the existence of your custom merge driver. You do this in the repo’s config file (.git/config):

[merge "verify"]
        name = merge and verify driver
        driver = ./merge-and-verify-driver %A %O %B

In this example, I’ve put merge-and-verify-driver in the repo’s top level directory (./). You will need to specify the path to the script accordingly.

Now, you just need to give the sensitive files the proper attributes so that the custom merge driver is used when merging those files. Add this to your .gitattributes file:

*.sensitive merge=verify

Here, I’ve told Git that any file with a name matching the pattern *.sensitive should use the custom merge driver. Obviously, you need to use pattern that is appropriate for your file(s).

More Related Contents:

  1. Can I make fast forwarding be off by default in git?
  2. How does ‘git merge’ work in details?
  3. Pull a certain branch from the remote server
  4. git merge: Removing files I want to keep!
  5. Git: Merge to master while automatically choosing to overwrite master files with branch
  6. What to do with branch after merge
  7. How do I manage conflicts with git submodules?
  8. How do you see / show a git merge conflict resolution that was done, given a merge commit SHA1?
  9. What exactly do we mean by “branch”?
  10. How to merge a specific commit in Git
  11. Track all remote git branches as local branches
  12. Git cherry pick and datamodel integrity
  13. How can I prevent foxtrot merges in my ‘master’ branch?
  14. Find out which remote branch a local branch is tracking
  15. Set up git to pull and push all branches
  16. Branch descriptions in Git
  17. git – how to get default branch?
  18. `git merge -s theirs` needed but it does not exist
  19. Git Cherry-pick vs Merge Workflow
  20. git working on two branches simultaneously
  21. git shallow clone (clone –depth) misses remote branches
  22. git: Switch branch and ignore any changes without committing
  23. Git: merging public and private branches while while keeping certain files intact in both branches
  24. Branching: different config files for release/development
  25. Error “Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do not have locally”
  26. main branch and ‘origin/main’ have diverged, how to ‘undiverge’ branches’?
  27. How do I run git log to see changes only for a specific branch?
  28. git push error: src refspec main does not match any on linux
  29. git branch permissions
  30. git merging branches in a bare repository

Leave a Comment