Git -Xours -Xtheirs arguments

Git provides a helpful argument to prefer one branch or the other to “clobber” merge conflicts:

git merge main -Xours
git merge main -Xtheirs

I always get confused what the “X” means. I always assume “X” means mark which branch to clobber. Like “X” out their branch. Or “X” out our branch. Please wipe this mnemonic from your brain!

“X” means “PREFER”

“PREFER” the changes in their branch (-Xtheirs) or “PREFER” the changes in our branch (-Xours).

Jeez!

Links

Humans don’t know what they care about

If you hand over the management of your civilization to machines, you then lose the incentive to understand it yourself or to teach the next generation. […] Up until now, we put a lot of our civilization into books. But the books can’t run it for us. So we always have to teach the next generation. If you work it out, it’s about a trillion person years of teaching and learning in an unbroken chain that goes back tens of thousands of generations. What happens if that chain breaks?

Stuart J. Russell