How to solve git merge error "Swap file .MERGE_MSG.swp already exists"
It's a message from VIM which apparently you are using as the text editor in git. Have you tried reading and following these two (1) (2) points? One of them will be probably true, and will let you solve this issue.
First of all, check that MERGE_MSG file (not MERGE_MSG.swp), and see if it exists and what's inside. Most likely it's trash or a temporary file that can be safely deleted. Judging from the name, it's probably the file name used as a temporary text editing area for merge commit messages.
Then, since you use VIM, when VIM starts, it tries to create a swap file for its own internal needs. The error message says it's ~/Documents/Sites/recipegenerator/.git/.MERGE_MSG.swp. Often, you can simply delete such swap files, especially if they are old or unexpected. However, if recently some merge-commit-message-editing session has crashed and if you had a lot of creative text you don't want to lose - then don't delete it and recover that swap instead, as described in (2) in the error message.
However, since you don't know what is going on and you haven't said anything about losing some text you wrote, and since it's probably just a MERGE_MSG that was auto-generated anyways, I suppose you can:
git merge --abort
rm ~/Documents/Sites/recipegenerator/.git/.MERGE_MSG.swp
and try what you were doing once again.
Also, it's good to check the hint mentioned in (1) in error message. Check with ps or whatever else for any open VIM sessions that could be currently editing that MERGE_MSG. If you spot any, then, well, get to them and either finish editing, or make them quit (escape, :q!, enter) (vim will cleanup swaps on quitting), or terminate them (kill them, but then you need to remove swap files manually).
Normally, you get this error message when you are performing GIT operations from two different places. Like I got this issue while I was using Git Bash (Command Line) & Visual Studio together to perform Git operations.
Reason:
This issue occurs when a commit or merge session is going on in one of the two instances of GIT. i.e. Git Bash & Visual Studio Git. Both instances try to edit the same file & we get this error message.
Solution:
Complete the commit or merge session in one of the two opened instances. After that Delete the .swp file (if it still exist after commiting (from any 1 of the instance).
Ref - https://stackoverflow.com/a/13361874/1273882
In my case, there was a problem closing the VI editor ...
- Restarting the terminal doesn't work.
- Restarting my mac solved the issue.
you need to abort the current commit by
git merge --abort
then you need to delete the merge message file.
go to the project directory and remove file by the following command
rm .git/.MERGE_MSG.swp
You can also do it with the folowing single command
git merge --abort && rm .git/.MERGE_MSG.swp