There have been times where I performed a rebase and had to resolve conflicts as part of the rebase, and then decided to abort the rebase for one reason or another. Without rerere the next time I went to perform the rebase I’d end up having to resolve at least some of the same conflicts I had previously, which is annoying.

This is where rerere comes in. It stands for reuse recorded resolution.

What rerere does is save the resolution of a conflict so that it can be re-applied later if it sees the same conflict again. When Git sees the conflict which it already has a resolution recorded for, it will apply the resolution automatically for you, and give you the opportunity to accept the resolution as applied, or change it.

Turning it on can be done two ways: set it as a configuration parameter using git config rerere.enabled true, or use it only when you think you might need it with git rerere both before and after the resolution of a conflict.

A more verbose explanation of rerere exists in Scott Chacon’s Pro Git.