title: How to force a merge to succeed when there are conflicts?
body: <p>I'm trying to merge a pull request that has one conflict in one file (see below). The instructions for merging the pull request are <a href="http://github.com/weidai11/cryptopp/pull/131" rel="noreferrer">provided by github</a> are as follows. Its important to to perform this merge so the person submitting the pr gets credit for it.</p>
  
  <pre><code># Step 1: From your project repository, check out a new branch and test the changes.
  git checkout -b droark-master master
  git pull https://github.com/droark/cryptopp.git master
  
  # Step 2: Merge the changes and update on GitHub.
  git checkout master
  git merge --no-ff droark-master
  git push origin master
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I know how to fix the one line in the one conflicting file. What I don't know how to do is make Git perform the merge and stop complaining about broken index files.</p>
  
  <p>How do I make Git perform the merge, ensure the person who provided the pull request gets credit for it, and stop breaking index files?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>I tried to repair the merge with <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/6006737/608639">Git merge errors</a>. One set of errors turns into another set of errors, <em>ad infinitum</em>. I also tried resetting the problem file according to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/15232000">Ignore files during merge</a> with plans to copy/paste the one line needed, but the broken index persists.</p>
  
  <p>This has turned into a complete waste of time, and I am no longer interested in trying to do it Git's way since it wastes so much time. Now I simply want Git to perform the merge and stop breaking index files.</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Here is the output produced when merging using github's instructions:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ git pull https://github.com/droark/cryptopp.git master
  From https://github.com/droark/cryptopp
   * branch            master     -&gt; FETCH_HEAD
  Auto-merging validate.h
  Auto-merging validat2.cpp
  Auto-merging validat1.cpp
  Auto-merging test.cpp
  CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in test.cpp
  Auto-merging pubkey.h
  Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.
  </code></pre>