Git confused when merging an update into my subtree

Unfortunately this is a bug (or missing feature) in the "git merge -s subtree" code. It actually guesses the subtrees that you want to merge. Usually, this magically turns out to be correct, but if your subtree contains a lot of changes (or was originally empty, or whatever), then it can fail spectacularly.

The best way to work around it is:

1. Merge the files as you did above.

2. Manually move all the resulting files to where they should have gone.

3. git commit -a --amend to correct the merge commit.

Future merges will probably work fine, unless this directory is constantly in unbelievable amounts of flux.

The experimental "git subtree" command has a --prefix parameter that should let you override this, but unfortunately it doesn't work at the moment (since it requires working around "git merge -s subtree" features and there hasn't been time to do it).

Anyway, this should be a rare situation and the workaround won't be needed even for future merges of the same project.

git version 1.7.9.5

git pull -s subtree <remote name> <remote branch>

(merge went into the wrong directory)

git reset --hard HEAD^git pull -s subtree -Xsubtree=correct/directory <remote name> <remote branch>

Note that there is no trailing slash on the directory

Thanks apenwarr

http://git.661346.n2.nabble.com/PATCH-0-8-The-return-of-Xours-Xtheirs-Xsubtree-dir-td4069081.html