Merging Branches & Conflict Resolution

💻 GitLesson 7Intermediate

Merging merges isolated branch features back into your active branch. Conflict resolution handles overlapping file modifications manually.

1 Merging & Conflicts

Shell — Merging Branches

# 1. Switch to the target merge branch (e.g. main)
git checkout main

# 2. Merge the feature branch into main
git merge feature-about

# Fast-forward merges occur when no commits occurred on target
# Recursive merges occur when conflicts require a merge commit

Text — Merge Conflict Markers

<<<<<<< HEAD
Content on main branch (target)
=======
Content on feature branch (incoming)
>>>>>>> feature-about

To resolve conflict errors, open the marked files, choose which block to preserve, delete the markers, stage the file, and commit the merge.

2 Code Challenge

Challenge: Trigger a merge conflict by editing the same line of a text file on both main and a feature branch. Attempt a merge, resolve the conflict markers manually, and commit.