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The name stands for "reuse recorded resolution" and as the name implies, it allows you to ask Git to remember how you've resolved a hunk conflict so that the next time it sees the same conflict, Git can automatically resolve it for you.

 

[...] if you want to take a branch that you merged and fixed a bunch of conflicts and then decide to rebase it instead - you likely won't have to do all the same conflicts again.

The name stands for "reuse recorded resolution" and as the name implies, it allows you to ask Git to remember how you've resolved a hunk conflict so that the next time it sees the same conflict, Git can automatically resolve it for you.

[...] if you want to take a branch that you merged and fixed a bunch of conflicts and then decide to rebase it instead - you likely won't have to do all the same conflicts again.

However, it looks like rerere wasn't already activated before the merge, which means Git must have kept no record of how you resolved the conflict the first time. At this stage, you have no other choice but to activate rerere now and resolve all those same conflicts again, once and for all.

However, it looks like rerere wasn't already activated before the merge, which means Git must have kept no record of how you resolved the conflict the first time. At this stage, you can either activate rerere now and resolve all those same conflicts manually again, or use the rerere-train.sh script (see also this blog post) to use the existing history to pre-seed the rerere cache.

TL;DR

The --preserve-merges flag simply tells git-rebase to try to recreate merge commits instead of ignoring them. It does not give git rebase the ability of remembering how merge conflicts were resolved, i.e. it does not record conflict resolutions for future use. What you want to use for that is rerere.

git init echo Hello > Hello.txt git add Hello.txt git commit -m "Create Hello.txt (commit A)" git tag start echo World! >> Hello.txt git commit -am "Change to Hello World (commit B)" git checkout start git checkout -b branch echo Dave >> Hello.txt git commit -am "Change to Hello Dave (commit C)" 

git merge master 

echo "Hello World, Dave!" > Hello.txt git add Hello.txt git commit -m "Merge branch master into branch (commit D)" 

git checkout start git checkout -b goodbye-branch echo Goodbye > Goodbye.txt git add Goodbye.txt git commit -m "Add Goodbye.txt (commit E)" 

git checkout branch git rebase -p goodbye-branch 

git config --global rerere.enabled true 

TL; DR

The --preserve-merges flag simply tells git-rebase to try to recreate merge commits instead of ignoring them. It does not give git rebase the ability to remember how merge conflicts were resolved, i.e. it does not record conflict resolutions for future use. What you want to use for that is rerere.

git init echo Hello > Hello.txt git add Hello.txt git commit -m "Create Hello.txt (commit A)" git tag start echo World! >> Hello.txt git commit -am "Change to Hello World (commit B)" git checkout start git checkout -b branch echo Dave >> Hello.txt git commit -am "Change to Hello Dave (commit C)" 

git merge master 

echo "Hello World, Dave!" > Hello.txt git add Hello.txt git commit -m "Merge branch master into branch (commit D)" 

git checkout start git checkout -b goodbye-branch echo Goodbye > Goodbye.txt git add Goodbye.txt git commit -m "Add Goodbye.txt (commit E)" 

git checkout branch git rebase -p goodbye-branch 

git config --global rerere.enabled true