How to select the entire REMOTE file during mergetool?

Question

I'm using CLI mergetool vimdiff and rather than going line by line and typing :diffg RE for every change to select the REMOTE version, is there a way I can just have the REMOTE version of the entire file as the target merge?

Vines

Git lets you specify merge strategies (ours, theirs) but these affect the entire merge. Be careful – Persiflage

Answer 1

Short answer:

Use :%diffget to get all chunks.

---

Explanation:

diffget takes - as most vim commands - a range. To quote vimhelp:

                                                        :diffg :diffget
:[range]diffg[et] [bufspec]
                Modify the current buffer to undo difference with another
                buffer.  [...]
                See below for [range].

[...]

When no [range] is given, the diff at the cursor position or just above it is
affected.  When [range] is used, Vim tries to only put or get the specified
lines.

% when used as a range is "equal to 1,$ (the entire file)", see :help :%.

Yung

Answer 2

(CLI alternative)

I'm aware it doesn't really answer your question as is, but if what you need is to take everything from one side for a specific conflicting file in a merge, you don't even need a tool.

You can check out the file version you want (check doc here and there) and then add it to resolve the conflict :

git checkout --ours path/to/file
# or
git checkout --theirs path/to/file

# and then to conclude the resolution
git add path/to/file

Note that you can also, if you regret that move, take it back to the unmerged state with conflict markers, with

git checkout -m path/to/file

Caesarea

Answer 3

In mergetool, if you have more than 2 buffers, you can't use :diffget, as Vim does not know from which file to get the diff from.

However, when you solve a conflict (you need to have mergetool running), you have a few files created by Git to manage the conflict:

Unmerged paths:
  (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
  (use "git add <file>..." to mark resolution)

    both modified:   my/conflicting/file.py

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    .env
    my/conflicting/file.py.orig
    my/conflicting/file_BACKUP_5038.py
    my/conflicting/file_BASE_5038.py
    my/conflicting/file_LOCAL_5038.py
    my/conflicting/file_REMOTE_5038.py

They represent different sides of the conflict:

• BACKUP is a copy of the file with the conflicts markers,
• LOCAL is your current state before the conflict,
• BASE contains the state of the file at the common ancestor commit between your local and the one being merged (or applied in case of rebase, cherry-pick or stash pop/apply),
• REMOTE is the commit trying to be applied <--- which is the version you want in your case

So what you can do is to copy the _REMOTE_ file as your current (cp path/to/file_REMOTE_* path/to/file), or in mergetool, copy the content of _REMOTE_ (:%y) and replace the content of your file with it (ggVGp, go at the top, go in visual line mode, go to the end, paste).

Eveliaevelin