What exactly "Commit merged changes immediately" does?

[Philip Steinebrunner]

Hi

I'am new to SourceTree/Git. Can anyone explain what exactly "Commit merged changes immediately" while pulling does? What is the difference between checking and unchecking this option?

Cheers Philip

[BenjiI · Accepted solution]

Hi Philip,

You have to do a commit when a merge is completed, because some of your local files might also be updated. By enabling the Commit merged changes immediately you give sourcetree the permission to do this commit directly/automatically if there were no merge conflicts.

Hope this answers your question?!

[BenjiI]

If this option was enabled and the merge fails with merge conflicts, no automatic commit will take place (and you have to do it manually after the merge conflicts have been fixed).

[Davel Liu]

What is the difference with `git fetch` if I leave the checkbox unchecked.

git pull equal to git fetch and then merge, right ?

[Seth]

"git fetch" only updates the background copies of the remote branches. None of your local branches are updated.

If you pull or merge from a tracked remote branch WITHOUT committing immediately, then it will place the merge result into your working copy as "uncommitted changes".

[Davel Liu]

Got it. Thanks a lot.

[wouter_visee]

> because some of your local files might also be updated

I feel like I'm missing something here, isn't that the whole point of a pull, to update your local files? And why can't you update your local files by making a new commit?

[Ashrith Racharla]

You are right in saying the purpose of Pull is to update local files. However, checking the "Commit merged changes immediately" helps you to avoid a few clicks/commands by doing both Pull and Commit at one go.

The response might be too late for you, but still wanted to comment as it might help somebody else!