After a Git merge conflict, a lot of files I didn't touch become changes to be committed

Question

So I\'m working in a branch, make some changes, and run git merge master. I get a merge conflict on one of the files I modified (which I know how to deal with),

Answer 1

Where I find this pop up is if I:

1) create, and work on a branch (b1)

---m
    \
     b1

---m
    \
      ---b1

2) create a new branch (b2) from b1, during which time someone else makes changes to completely unrelated code in master

----------------m
    \
      ---b1
          \
           b2

3) go back and make some changes to b1, and then pull b1 into master.

----------------m
    \          /
      -------b1
          \
            --b2

If I then try to pull from master into b2, I'll get a conflict because of the changes made to b1 after creating b2. If I fix the conflict, the resulting commit will include all changes that have occurred on master since the branch of b1, as if I had performed them. (git blame seems to be able to tell the original author though)

In this scenario, if I instead first pull from b1 into b2, and sort out the merge there, then I can then pull from master without issue, and the pulled-in irrelevant commits won't show up as changes I've made.

git merge --abort is your friend, if you're in the middle of a merge full of commits you didn't make.