# Can Program Synthesis be Used to Learn Merge Conflict Resolutions? An Empirical Analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.02004 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02004/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 Mar 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [AutoTSG: Learning and Synthesis for Incident Troubleshooting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13457/) (2022)
- [Program Merge Conflict Resolution via Neural Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00084/) (2021)
- [GitGoodBench: A Novel Benchmark For Evaluating Agentic Performance On Git](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22583/) (2025)
- [Example-based Synthesis of Static Analysis Rules](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08643/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Forking structure is widespread in the open-source repositories and that causes a significant number of merge conflicts. In this paper, we study the problem of textual merge conflicts from the perspective of Microsoft Edge, a large, highly collaborative fork off the main Chromium branch with significant merge conflicts. Broadly, this study is divided into two sections. First, we empirically evaluate textual merge conflicts in Microsoft Edge and classify them based on the type of files, location of conflicts in a file, and the size of conflicts. We found that ~28% of the merge conflicts are 1-2 line changes, and many resolutions have frequent patterns. Second, driven by these findings, we explore Program Synthesis (for the first time) to learn patterns and resolve structural merge conflicts. We propose a novel domain-specific language (DSL) that captures many of the repetitive merge conflict resolution patterns and learn resolution strategies as programs in this DSL from example resolutions. We found that the learned strategies can resolve 11.4% of the conflicts (~41% of 1-2 line changes) that arise in the C++ files with 93.2% accuracy.