Is there a way to make git rerere work when the resolution is to delete the conflicted file?

Question

Here's the deal. master has a file, file1. I branch, and delete that file in the branch. Meanwhile, I modify file1 on master. Boom, conflict.

When I merge my branch into master, the resolution is to delete the file. I'm trying to use git rerere to be able to do the same resolution multiple times, but as you can see below it doesn't record the resolution in the case when you're deleting the file.

I can't find any docs on this specifically, is this just a limitation of rerere?

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✓| → touch file1.txt

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✗| → git add . && git commit -m 'File1'
[master (root-commit) 95a807e] File1
 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 file1.txt

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✓| → git checkout -b delete_file_1
Switched to a new branch 'delete_file_1'

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |delete_file_1 ✓| → git rm file1.txt
rm 'file1.txt'

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |delete_file_1 ✗| → git commit -m 'rm file1'
[delete_file_1 83d1a57] rm file1
 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 file1.txt

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |delete_file_1 ✓| → git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✓| → echo 'hello' > file1.txt

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✗| → git commit -am 'update file1'
[master 16f6541] update file1
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✓| → git merge delete_file_1 
CONFLICT (modify/delete): file1.txt deleted in delete_file_1 and modified in HEAD. Version HEAD of file1.txt left in tree.
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✗| → git rm file1.txt
file1.txt: needs merge
rm 'file1.txt'

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✗| → git commit --no-edit
[master 4791204] Merge branch 'delete_file_1'

Here we should see something like "recorded resolution for file1.txt", but we don't. Just to be sure it's not recording our resolution, we keep going and do the exact same merge again:

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✓| → git reset head^
Unstaged changes after reset:
D   file1.txt

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✗| → git co .

 |system| brad-macbook-air in ~/tmp
± bb+ih |master ✓| → git merge delete_file_1 
CONFLICT (modify/delete): file1.txt deleted in delete_file_1 and modified in HEAD. Version HEAD of file1.txt left in tree.
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.

And here you can see that git rerere doesn't remember the conflict resolution (and in fact incorrectly leaves the file in the tree).

Answer 1

As the way it stands right now, No. rerere tries to record previous resolutions based on hunks in each conflicted file. In case of delete, rerere sees it only as no hunks to resolve.

Answer 2

I had problems too when the feature branch includes a new file that doesn't exist in the main branch , but in order to get the feature branch merged into the master and have it work correctly, it requires a small modification to this new file. The git rerere doesn't realize that this is part of the entire merge process and hence never records the changes required.