GIT合并冲突：创建新分支并删除一些文件后

Question

I have a problem with a GIT merge. In fact, I have a master branch with this architecture:

.git
doc
   \__ some files

src
   \__ tools 1
              \__ some files

   \__ tools 2
              \__ some files

In my project, I developed tools and I will add other tools in the "src" directory. For that, for each time I want to create a new tool, I will create a new branch named "tools3" from master branch and then remove all directories that I do not need, here "tools 1", "tools 2" and "doc". The reason is that I do not need documentation and other tools to develop.

So now, after those deleting I code my "tools 3" and I commit and push it into the new branch "tools3". It's time to merge my two branches with a git merge tools3 -m "Merge tools3 branch with master branch" (in master branch).

I have two problems, first some conflicts among with documentation files:

CONFLICT MESSAGE: CONFLICT (modify/delete): doc/api_project.json deleted in tools3 and modified in HEAD. Version HEAD of doc/api_project.json left in tree. CONFLICT (modify/delete): doc/api_project.json deleted in tools3 and modified in HEAD. Version HEAD of doc/api_project.json left in tree.

In the second time, the merging removes my "src" files (the ones I deleted earlier in "tools3" branch).

So, how can I fix this merge conflict and then how can I retrieve my removing files in master branch? I think I do not have the best practice to do this type of things with GIT so I am open to any suggestions about GIT practices.

Answer 1

You mustn't delete the files from the repo you don't need. This is the reason you get the conflict(s).

While you've been working in your tools 3 dir, other contributors may have worked in them. Eg fixing bugs, adding new features, etc. They've completed their work and pushed it to master .

When its time for you to do push your work, history has diverged. Since you started your branch, on one hand you've deleted some files, and on the other these files have been changed by other people. Git can't make the decision on what the correct route to take is, so it creates a conflict.

You only really want to delete a file from a git repo if it is no longer useful for the entire project and no longer need it source controlled. To me it looks like you are only deleting them because you want to keep your directory structure "clean" or some other reason we can only speculate on.

Answer 2

Every time you create new tool you are creating the branch by cloning your master branch. once you added a new tool into the newly created branch, you are comparing the master and newly created branch in the background. So whatever the new changes are there will be added in the master branch and what is the modified changes will be updated/removed from the master branch. So you must not delete the code from any branch as it will be removed at the time of merging.

Answer 3

The conflict you're encountering is because another person has made a change in master to one of the files that you have deleted in tools3 . As a result, when you're attempting to merge git needs to work out how to apply the changes that were made in master to a file that you deleted before the changes were made.

Visual representation:

*   - Added doc/api_project.json
|\
| * - Deleted doc/api_project.json
| |
* | - [master] Updated doc/api_project.json
  |
  * - [tools3] Dev work on tools

As you can see above, to put those commits in to a single branch, git needs to know how to apply the changes made in the third commit to a file deleted in the second commit.

You shouldn't make any changes in a branch which do not apply to the feature that you're working on in that branch. By deleting files, you've created a commit that deletes those files.

Hopefully you performed the deletion as a separate commit (can we see git log output for your tools3 branch?) which would mean all you'd need to do is remove that commit from your branch before merging.

Removing the deletion operations will solve both your problems, you'll no longer have a conflict and the files that are being removed from the master branch (because you deleted them in tools3 ) will no longer be removed.