git diff: zdiff3

I’ve been using git since 2007 or so, when the pre-GitHub team started talking it up in the SF Ruby scene. (Oh man, icanhazRuby. That was a time.)

I’ve always found the merge conflict resolution text to be a bit confusing. Who’s us and who’s them? What exactly happened here? TIL that part of the problem is that, like a fool, I’ve left the merge.conflictstyle config setting on its default merge value.

For years now, the better choice has been diff3. That setting makes it so the merge conflict resolution text in your file includes the original text content along with the two conflicting versions. Thus you can at least see the context of the change, rather than trying to remember or guess what the changes were about in the first place.

Even better, since 2022 (git version 2.35), there’s been a third setting option: zdiff3. Which not only includes the original context of the changes, but pulls out overlapping, similar content from each of the changes. Thus reducing the amount of conflict you need to think about.

This all sounds a little abstract, I realize. The short version:

In your .gitconfig:

[merge]
  conflictstyle = zdiff3

For more detailed information (including nice visuals), see this post and the git docs.