Rerere for Recurring Conflicts

What you will learn

• Understand the core purpose of Rerere for Recurring Conflicts
• Master the basic usage and common options of Rerere for Recurring Conflicts
• Use rerere to record and reuse conflict resolutions when the same merge or rebase conflicts appear again and again.
• Understand key concepts: What this workflow solves
• Know when to use this feature and when to avoid it

Start with a problem

Your team is collaborating on a project, branches are growing, merges are becoming more frequent — but there's no stable collaboration rhythm. Everyone syncs code their own way, and conflicts are piling up.

What this workflow solves

Conflict Scenario

First encounter conflictManually resolvererere records solution

→rerere auto-reuse

Conflict Resolved

rerere.enabled = true → auto-recordNext same conflict → auto-applyConfirm with git rerere status

rerere is disabled by default. Enable with rerere.enabled = true in repo. Records stored in .git/rr-cache/.

On long-lived branches and repeated rebases, the exhausting part is often not conflict itself but solving the same conflict over and over again.

rerere helps Git remember how you resolved a conflict before, so similar conflicts can be reused later.

When rerere is worth enabling

• long-lived branches sync with main regularly
• the same files conflict repeatedly
• the team backports or replays similar fixes across multiple branches

Minimal setup

git config --global rerere.enabled true
git config --global rerere.autoupdate true

The first conflict still needs normal manual resolution. The win appears when similar conflicts show up again.

Common mistakes

• assuming rerere replaces understanding the conflict
• accepting reused results without checking them
• expecting perfect reuse when the surrounding context has changed heavily

Try it yourself

1. Practice the rerere-for-recurring-conflicts command in a test repository and observe state changes before and after
2. Experiment with different options and compare the output differences
3. Simulate a real scenario where you would need to use this, and walk through the full process

Further reading

Keep going on the same topic:

• Release Train Workflow
• Revert-First Stabilization Workflow
• Rollback Deployment Workflow