What does the settings.xml file do for the API folders?

(composite project) Inside of the API folders there is a settings.xml file, and in that file there is a con:content line for CDATA. Ultimately what does this line accomplish in the project? Is this file something we can safely add to a git ignore file? Cause this seems to just be an aggregate of all of API.xml files inside the same folder.

Some back story is that were getting a lot of merge conflicts with this line, as a fun little test I completely removed the line and relaunched the project and everything still worked/loaded which is why I'm asking this question.

I also saw some options that we can turn on in https://support.smartbear.com/readyapi/docs/testing/teamwork.html for merging changes which may be a better approach