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Whenever there are some git merge conflicts we would type git mergetool and git would automatically launch a merge tool for us to merge the conflicts. I have been using vimdiff for a long time as my mergetool, but found it actually not efficient at all as using three-way merging won't provide more information but would occupy the precious screen space.

So I am really interested in using pure vim (not in diff mode) as my git mergetool. But I can't configure it directly since git only accepts certain difftools as git mergetool(opendiff kdiff3 tkdiff xxdiff meld tortoisemerge gvimdiff diffuse diffmerge ecmerge p4merge araxis bc codecompare emerge vimdiff).

So I am wondering if there is way that I can configure pure vim as my tool to solve conflicts? Note using vim to open and edit the conflicted files directly is not desired here since you would lose a lot of conveniences provided by calling git mergetool, including automatic file opening and automatic git staging.

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  • If it's "pure vim (not in diff mode)" what would your workflow look like? You could also see e.g. some other questions for customizing.
    – D. Ben Knoble ♦
    May 17, 2018 at 19:04
  • @D.BenKnoble I just merge the conflicts based on the <<<<, ==== and >>>> marks. I think those information is sufficient for us to solve the most conflicts, isn't it? Besides since we have a larger window by using the pure vim, we would have better understanding of the nearby context when solving the conflicts.
    – hzh
    May 17, 2018 at 19:14
  • What do you mean by automatic git staging? Also, i believe all the information you need is in git help mergetool
    – D. Ben Knoble ♦
    May 17, 2018 at 19:22
  • @D.BenKnoble After you solved the conflicts and closed the file, git would automatically add the file you just solved to index and generate a .orig file. This really helps you to know the progress.
    – hzh
    May 17, 2018 at 19:26
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    Hm. Check the help page then. I think you can configure vim as your tool and use trustStatus or something similar for the staging.
    – D. Ben Knoble ♦
    May 17, 2018 at 19:27

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I think something like this in your ~/.gitconfig file should do what your asking.

[merge] 
    tool = myvimdiff
[mergetool "myvimdiff"]
    cmd = vim "$MERGED"

There are lots of other options for the mergetool besides cmd, search for merge.<tool>. in man git-config (and obviously you can customise cmd how you like it. When merging 4 files are available: $LOCAL, $BASE, $REMOTE, and $MERGED (again look at the documentation for that). You can see how git sets up the default tools here if you want more inspiration.

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