Choose Git merge strategy for specific files (“ours”, “mine”, “theirs”)

Question

I am in the middle of rebasing after a git pull --rebase. I have a few files that have merge conflicts. How can I accept "their" changes or "my" changes for specific files?

$ git status
# Not currently on any branch.
# You are currently rebasing.
#   (fix conflicts and then run "git rebase --continue")
#   (use "git rebase --skip" to skip this patch)
#   (use "git rebase --abort" to check out the original branch)
#
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#       modified:  CorrectlyMergedFile
#
# Unmerged paths:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#   (use "git add <file>..." to mark resolution)
#
#       both modified: FileWhereIWantToAcceptTheirChanges
#       both modified: FileWhereIWantToAcceptMyChanges

Normally I just open the file or a merge tool and manually accept all "their" or "my" changes. However, I suspect I'm missing a convenient git command.

Also, note that I will only be able to choose a merge strategy for each file when I see what files hit conflicts an possibly what the conflicts are.

Answer 1

For each conflicted file you get, you can specify

git checkout --ours -- <paths>
# or
git checkout --theirs -- <paths>

From the git checkout docs

git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>] [--] <paths>...

--ours
--theirs
When checking out paths from the index, check out stage #2 (ours) or #3 (theirs) for unmerged paths.

The index may contain unmerged entries because of a previous failed merge. By default, if you try to check out such an entry from the index, the checkout operation will fail and nothing will be checked out. Using -f will ignore these unmerged entries. The contents from a specific side of the merge can be checked out of the index by using --ours or --theirs. With -m, changes made to the working tree file can be discarded to re-create the original conflicted merge result.

Answer 2

Even though this question is answered, providing an example as to what "theirs" and "ours" means in the case of git rebase vs merge. See this link

Git Rebase
theirs is actually the current branch in the case of rebase. So the below set of commands are actually accepting your current branch changes over the remote branch.

# see current branch
$ git branch
... 
* branch-a
# rebase preferring current branch changes during conflicts
$ git rebase -X theirs branch-b

Git Merge
For merge, the meaning of theirs and ours is reversed. So, to get the same effect during a merge, i.e., keep your current branch changes (ours) over the remote branch being merged (theirs).

# assuming branch-a is our current version
$ git merge -X ours branch-b  # <- ours: branch-a, theirs: branch-b

Answer 3

Note that git checkout --ours|--theirs will overwrite the files entirely, by choosing either theirs or ours version, which might be or might not be what you want to do (if you have any non-conflicted changes coming from the other side, they will be lost).

If instead you want to perform a three-way merge on the file, and only resolve the conflicted hunks using --ours|--theirs, while keeping non-conflicted hunks from both sides in place, you may want to resort to git merge-file; see details in this answer.