fatal: cannot do a partial commit during a merge. Completed with errors, see above

Question

With the new version of SourceTree (1.9.0), I am getting commit errors that I was not seeing before.

The main one is trying to Commit changes brought to a branch from a Merge. the local repo contains other changed  files that I do not want to associate with the commit (basically, I only want to commit the files that were changed from the merge, and leave the other files out of the commit). It used to be possible prior to 1.9.0. 1.9.0 broke that option.

any workaround?

Seth · Answer

It is generally advisable to keep settings files out of the repository (they can be in the working directory, but ignored). If you have them in the repo for documentation purposes, I recommend putting them in with an extra piece in the filename.

For example, if your settings are in 'settings.ini', rename the settings.ini in the repo to settings.default.ini, then make it part of standard deployment steps to copy that file to 'settings.ini', then modify it. If this occurs in a repository working copy, the 'settings.ini' file can be safely ignored.

eric franchomme · Answer

that's inconvenient as it adds more steps to the process, and error prone, as it's easy to forget to stash; and also, once I stash, I can not test the results of the merge: the files that were already in the local repo are for Settings/Testing purposes.

Seth · Answer

Try stashing/shelving the changes in your local repo prior to the merge.