Bug: Aborting conflict resolution still stages file when using external tool

[Piotr]

1. Right click on an unstaged file > Resolve Conflicts > Launch External Merge Tool

2. Externa tool is opened, SourceTree shows "Visual Merge In Progress" window with Abort button

3. After I click Abort and close external, SourceTree moves the unstaged file to staged files and in unstaged file new ".orig" file is left

My expectation is that since I aborted the the conflick resolution, it should leave the file in unstaged section. Right now I have to manually mark the file as unresolved. Also, if there are multiple files in Staged files, it is sometimes hard to find the file.

I tried reporting this as a bug but your bug tracking website does not allow me to do that - the Create issue window has only Cancel button...

[Mike Corsaro]

Hello! This is a result of the return code your merge-tool is returning back to Git. You can read more about this here

[Piotr]

What does the "Abort" button do if it's not aborting the conflict resolution?

[Mike Corsaro]

It just closes the dialog and terminates the process. I assume git then updates the index when your tool closes.

You can see the same behavior Sourcetree does by doing the following via the terminal:

• Have a conflicting file in your repo
• Run:

  • git mergetool -y --tool=YOUR_MERGE_TOOL -- YOUR_FILE_NAME

• Wait for the mergetool to start
• Kill the git.exe process via task manager
• Close the merge tool and observe that "git status" no longer reports a merge conflict

[Piotr]

It just closes the dialog and terminates the process. I assume git then updates the index when your tool closes.

It does not terminate the process. Tested with p4merge and with WinMerge. I have to close the tool myself. To me it looks like the button does nothing.

• git mergetool -y --tool=YOUR_MERGE_TOOL -- YOUR_FILE_NAME

Yes you are right, git behaves in the same way. In the config I see following:

mergetool.sourcetree.cmd='C:/Program Files/Perforce/p4merge.exe' "$BASE" "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" "$MERGED"

After running:

git mergetool -y --tool=sourcetree -- myfile

and closing p4merge window and choosing not to save changes, the file is indeed moved to staged.

So I understand that SourceTree is simply calling git to do the merge resolution using mergetool, and I'd have the same issue if I was using git directly.

Still, is there no way to abort a conflict resolution using external tool, in a way that the file is not staged and that it's still marked as having unresolved conflict?

[Dennis Rosen]

I am having the same issue. Is there a way to tell git to leave the file unresolved? When the external merge tool aborted or otherwise did not complete the merge.

[Dennis Rosen]

Maybe there's something similar to setting git config mergetool.<tool>.trustExitCode to 0/false in Sourcetree?