Duplicate cherry-picks on two branches merge cleanly; only diverged picks conflict

A common belief is that merging two branches that both cherry-picked the same commits produces conflicts because the SHAs differ. Tested on git 2.43.0: when both branches applied the same patch (git cherry-pick -x of the same two upstream commits), git merge completed without conflicts and each change appeared once. The 3-way merge compares content against the merge base, and identical changes on both sides resolve trivially. Conflicts appear only when one side's copy diverged (a different conflict resolution, or a later edit to the same lines): an amended pick gave CONFLICT (content). So before reaching for a rebuild-on-one-side strategy, diff the picked files between branches (git diff A B -- <files>). If they're identical, just merge.