git's behaviour during a 'both added' merge conflict

git's behaviour during a 'both added' merge conflict

[Jeremy Morton]

I've noticed that when you're merging and there is a 'both added'
merge conflict, git creates the .LOCAL and .REMOTE files for the
merge, but not the .BASE file.  Now, there isn't an actual base file
because the file has been added anew in both branches, but wouldn't it
make sense for git to just create an empty .BASE file anyway?
Conceptually, new content is being added on both sides to an empty
container - the fact that it didn't exist as a file on the filesystem
before is something git isn't meant to care about.  It also makes
things easier for merge tools which are expecting a .BASE file; in
practice, scripts just usually create the empty .BASE file anyway.
Why not have git do this itself without a script?

Best regards,
Jeremy Morton (Jez)

Re: git's behaviour during a 'both added' merge conflict

[Junio C Hamano]

Jeremy Morton <jeremy@configit.com> writes:

> I've noticed that when you're merging and there is a 'both added'
> merge conflict, git creates the .LOCAL and .REMOTE files for the
> merge, but not the .BASE file.

Strictly speaking, git doesn't, but I think mergetool may.

You may find this thread interesting:

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/188776/focus=188867

which resulted in ec245ba (mergetool: Provide an empty file when needed,
2012-01-19); that change is in v1.7.9.1 and upwards IIRC.