difference between remote local and base using p4merge

This video tutorial does a good job of explaining what each of these views mean:

4-pane merge tools show you these panes:

• LOCAL – your file with the changes you’ve made to it
• BASE – the common ancestor file that LOCAL and REMOTE came from
• REMOTE – the file you’re merging in, possibly authored by someone else
• MERGE_RESULT – the file resulting from the merge where you resolve conflicts

We could visualize the history of the file as follows:

remote: ... v1 -- v2 -- v3
                   \
local:              v4

Here v3 would be the REMOTE version of file, and v4 is the LOCAL version. The BASE is v2, and the MERGE_RESULT is the file which would result from merging the remote into the local file.

If you're using SourceTree you can see this. Which is what Tim suggested above.

P -- B
 \
  A

git checkout A
git merge B    #merge B into A

• local = A
• remote = B
• base = P

I would add that on a rebase, local and remote are reversed.

P -- B
 \
  A

git checkout A
git rebase B    #rebase A onto B

• local = B
• remote = A
• base = P