merge3 already resolved every region except one -- the case where both sides changed it differently. That branch now takes a side instead of always writing an envelope; the clean cases above it are untouched, which is the whole point. A region only one side changed is still that side's under either strategy, so -X is not 'discard their work', it is 'stop asking me'. The mechanical cases are what it is for: a regenerated lockfile, a vendored tree taken whole from upstream.

Applies to content disagreements -- conflicting hunks, add-vs-add, and both-modified binaries. It deliberately does NOT resolve modify-vs-delete: that is a disagreement about whether the file should exist, not about its contents, and either reading silently destroys work. git declines it too.

-X ours is not --backout, and the help says so outright: --backout reverses NAME's change, -X ours keeps your side where the two collide and reverses nothing. They read alike and do different things.

Composes with precedent (#103) without either knowing about the other: precedent is a pass over the outcome set, so a strategy that leaves no conflict leaves it nothing to replay or record. Verified both ways -- -X records no precedent, and a plain merge still conflicts and records.

A bad or missing -X value is a usage error rather than a silent fall back to markers, which would look exactly like a strategy that ran and found nothing. check-in: 52b8c57f4c user: dmestas tags: trunk