Git - revert to branches after failed merge?

Question

I have two branches, the head of each is at the respective last commit. If I merge the two, and there are conflicts I can't resolve (I am new to Git), can I simply checkout the last commits before the merge and have another go at it or attempt another strategy?

Solution

It seems to me you simply want to abort the merge. The modern way to do this is:

git merge --abort

And the slightly older way:

git reset --merge

The old-school way would be (warning: will discard all your local changes):

git reset --hard

It's worth noticing that git merge --abort is only equivalent to git reset --merge given that MERGE_HEAD is present. This can be read in the git help for merge command.

git merge --abort is equivalent to git reset --merge when MERGE_HEAD is present.

After a failed merge, when there is no MERGE_HEAD, the failed merge can be undone with git reset --merge but not necessarily with git merge --abort. This is why i find git reset --merge to be much more useful in everyday work.

In your case, any of the alternatives will work as you don't have a failed merge but just an ongoing merge you want to abort.

Comments

[Kamil]

Check those two posts stackoverflow.com/questions/2389361/… and stackoverflow.com/questions/7099833/…. You should be able to find an answer.