git rebase --onto causes conflict — why?

I'm trying a

git rebase --onto master myremote/master~21 myremote/master

to add the latest 21 commits from a remote repository on mine.

What git tells me is that there's a conflict — but how's that possible?

In my understanding it's just taking that 21 commits and applying them on top of my master. How can there b开发者_开发问答e conflicts?

Thanks for help!

I'm doing that btw because somehow I messed up my git-svn repository (the remote), and there's 21 commits which I don't manage to commit to subversion. So I'm trying with a fresh git-svn clone, in which I'm adding those 21 commits.

---

There is conflict if:

• master has commit that are not in myremote/master.
• those commits include common files/changes with one the last 21 myremote/master commits.

If somehow the fresh git-svn clone has different SHA1 than the previous git-svn repo, then there is no close common ancestors, and the chances of conflicts are that much higher.
See "How to identify conflicting commits by hash during git rebase?" for illustrations of conflicts during a rebase.

---

One way to reset your local master to myremote/master would be to:

git checkout -b tmp myremote/master  # local tmp branch from myremote/master HEAD.
git merge -s ours master             # ignore completely master content
git checkout master
git merge tmp                        # fast-forward to tmp HEAD

If you hadn't made any changes in your local master before fetching myremote/master, this should work.