Restart/undo conflict resolution in a single file

Question

In a larger git merge with several conflicting files, I incorrectly marked a file as resolved (using git add FILE after some editing)

Now I'd like to undo my conflict resolution attempt and start over resolving that file.

How can I do that?

see here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/373812/rollback-file-to-much-earlier-version — RandomUs1r, Jan 18 '13 at 23:44

score 481 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 19 '13 at 00:18

481

git checkout -m FILE

This restores the unresolved state, including all information about parent and merge base, which allows restarting the resolution.

answered Jan 19 '13 at 00:18

Alex Krauss

6

+1; this is the actual solution :) `git reset` won’t touch the file. – poke Jan 19 '13 at 00:22
6

Didn't work for me, file is still marked with `both modified` (in conflict state) – Gaui Apr 25 '16 at 20:18
2

This really helped me out since it put the file back into it's pre-conflict resolution state. What's interesting is that instead of the two merge points being named "head" and {REVISION}, they're now called "ours" and "theirs". – gcode Jun 13 '16 at 20:26
Worked perfectly after I accepted the version from the wrong side. – izilotti Oct 07 '16 at 19:24
51

"file is still marked with `both modified`". That's exactly the intended result of the question. – Kevin Smyth May 05 '17 at 14:16
14

`-m` as in `--merge` – kontur Dec 16 '19 at 09:38
As of more modern versions of git, the updated solution would be: `git restore -m FILE`. – LoneCodeRanger Feb 20 '23 at 12:11
This does not work if the resolution of a conflict was to delete the file. Neither `checkout` nor `restore` works. – Florian Winter Jul 26 '23 at 13:58

1 Answers1