git conflict notation not showing

git,merge-conflict-resolution,git-rerere

My guess was you might have git-rerere enabled. Rerere your boat... man git-rerere This facility [re]cords [re]solutions to past conflicts. So next time you merge or rebase the same topic branch into a (very) similar (revision of) a branch, then git [re]members which conflict resolutions you picked and applies them...

Is there a way to make git rerere work when the resolution is to delete the conflicted file?

git,git-rerere

As the way it stands right now, No. rerere tries to record previous resolutions based on hunks in each conflicted file. In case of delete, rerere sees it only as no hunks to resolve.