Enhancement: `git pull` fails with merge conflict even if the local copy is modified in the same manner

Enhancement: `git pull` fails with merge conflict even if the local copy is modified in the same manner

[Xuancong Wang]

Dear Git developers,

I would like to report a bug or defect in git.

I am in charge of running a real-life study. Very often, I copy the
source files to the working folder and test running the pipeline to
make sure that it does not crash. At the same time, I push my code to
my branch and create a merge request. After my branch gets merged to
the master branch (which takes some time), I run `git pull -f` in the
working folder (which always contains the latest version of my code
manually copied in). This pull operation will fail with conflict
because the source file gets modified both locally and in the updated
repository, even though the final file content is the same.

So my suggestion is that would you make Git a bit smarter so that if
the same file gets modified in the same way both locally and remotely,
would you allow the pull operation to pass? Thanks!

Best regards,
Xuancong