Option to use external merge tool is greyed out

Question

Hi,

In Sourcetree, I've selected DiffMerge as my external diff and merge tool, and when I select a file with conflicts I can launch it to compare diffs using "Actions/External Diff". But I cannot launch it to perform merges using "Actions/Resolve Conflicts/Launch External Merge Tool", as this menu option is greyed out. (In fact, all of the option in "Resolve Conflicts" are greyed out entirely. Any suggestions?

Marcus Watson · Answer

Hmmm... sorry for my noobiness here. When I select the file in Sourcetree, it shows me what I thought was the conflict markup (hunks with green/red +/- lines). However if I go to the File Status view and select "Conflicts" from the dropdown menu, nothing shows up. Looking into the menu above the code hunks, it's set to "Diff vs. parent". But in the code itself, there are all sorts of lines like

<<<<<<< .merge_file_sTV4Bz

and

=======

and so forth. So I would have thought this should be treated as a file to be merged?

However when I go to the File Status view, this file is just flagged as "modified", not "conflicted".

Seth · Answer

Is the file recognized by Git as being in a "conflicted" state, or is it a file with conflict markup that is flagged as something else (modified, not tracked, added, etc)?