Highlights from Git 2.56

The open source Git project just released Git 2.56.0 with features and bug fixes from over 104 contributors, 39 of them new. We last caught up with you on the latest in Git back when 2.55 was released.

To celebrate this most recent release, here is GitHub’s look at some of the most interesting features and changes introduced since last time.

Stage resolved conflicts without staging everything else

Resolving a merge conflict has two distinct parts. First, you edit the working tree until each conflicted path contains the result you want. Then, you stage those paths to tell Git that the conflict is resolved.

Suppose a merge conflicts in recipe.txt, while notes.txt contains an unrelated local edit.

The second step sounds simple, but existing commands make it easy to stage more than you intended. git add -u updates every modified tracked path. During a merge, that may include local changes that are unrelated to the conflict. …