When I'm confused by a 3-way diff (I personally prefer FileMerge/opendiff on macOS) and need more info I like to use git log to examine the relevant commits usi

When I'm confused by a 3-way diff (I personally prefer FileMerge/opendiff on macOS) and need more info I like to use git log to examine the relevant commits using the "..." operator which returns the symmetric difference between two commits (in this case both sides of the merge) and their merge base: git log -p HEAD...MERGE_HEAD --path/to/file https://www.git-scm.com/docs/git-log https://www.git-scm.com/docs/git-log Another trick is doing multiple merges which each include fewer commits. Sometimes the problem is that you're just trying to merge too much at a time. The downside of this is that in files with a lot of churn you may have to deal with conflicts that you might otherwise not. So it's a bit of a two-edged sword.