git rerere

Re-Recorded Resolution. Conflict autopilot — once you opt in.

🎯 What & why

git rerere (REused REcorded REsolution) records how you resolve a conflict and replays that resolution the next time the same conflict appears. It is a quiet productivity multiplier on long-lived topic branches and repeated rebases.

🧠 Mental model

A key-value cache: key is the pre-image conflict hunk, value is your resolution. On re-encounter, git stages the cached resolution automatically; you only re-verify.

🛠️ Synopsis

git rerere [clear | forget <pathspec> | diff |
            remaining | status | gc]

🎚️ Switches & options

Flag	What it does
`rerere.enabled=true`	Config switch; rerere does nothing until you set this.
`rerere.autoUpdate=true`	Auto-stage replayed resolutions instead of just applying them to the worktree.
`--rerere-autoupdate`	Per-command override for merge/rebase/cherry-pick.

📦 Subcommands

clear — Wipe all recorded resolutions for the current merge.

git rerere clear

forget <path> — Drop the recorded resolution for a specific path; re-record on next conflict.

git rerere forget src/api.py

diff — Show what rerere would apply for the current conflicts.

git rerere diff

remaining — List paths that still have unresolved conflicts.

git rerere remaining

status — Show paths where rerere has recorded data for the current conflict.

git rerere status

gc — Prune old, unused recorded resolutions from .git/rr-cache.

git rerere gc

💡 Use cases

Long-running feature branch that you rebase onto main weekly; same conflicts recur.
Splitting a big merge into smaller test steps, redoing the merge several times.
Reapplying a series of cherry-picks across release branches with overlapping context.
Recovering from a botched rebase without re-resolving every hunk by hand.

🧪 Examples

Turn it on globally

git config --global rerere.enabled true

Forget a bad recorded resolution

git rerere forget path/to/file.txt

See what rerere is about to do

git rerere diff

Garbage-collect stale entries

git rerere gc

🎓 Recommendations

Enable rerere globally; the cost is near zero, the upside on rebases is large.
Also set rerere.autoUpdate=true so replayed resolutions land in the index without an extra git add.
Use git rerere forget <path> the moment you realize a recorded resolution is wrong; otherwise it haunts you.

🪤 Common pitfalls

Rerere will happily replay a buggy resolution forever; always re-read the diff after auto-apply.
Resolutions are local to .git/rr-cache and not shared with the team; teammates each build their own.
Subtle context drift can cause rerere to silently not match; don't assume it always kicked in.

🔗 Related modules

📝 Quiz

Hit each option, then Check answers. Score is recorded; Next is always open.