A non-overlapping change is a change where one branch alters an area of a file while in the other branch this area is left intact. When do merge conflicts happen?Īccording to the Git docs, 'non-overlapping' changes in files can be automatically merged. Merge conflicts occur in relation to individual files in a codebase. However, sometimes this is not possible, and it requires human intervention to choose how to merge two versions of an individual file. In many cases, Git can carry out a merge automatically, leaving your changes in place and adding in the changes from the source branch, such as new files and changes to parts of the codebase that you've not altered. What are merge conflicts?ĭuring a merge, Git will update the set of files in your working tree (the set of files that you work on in Visual Studio) to reflect changes coming in from the source branch. For simplicity, I'm going to focus on solving merge conflicts between two local branches in this blog. Pull and push operations between separate repositories can also carry out a merge between the remote and local versions of the same branch, and cause merge conflicts. ![]() Or using the merge options in Visual Studio's Team Explorer or a third party Git client, as described in the previous post. Once you have checked out the branch you want to merge changes into, a merge is triggered using the command Going back to the typical scenario above, I want to carry out merges to update my feature branch, but not to alter the develop branch, at least until my feature is complete.īefore you carry out a merge, you should make sure that the destination branch is checked out, and commit the latest version of this branch. The source branch is not updated as a result of the merge. The HEAD/ destination branch will be updated as a result of the merge, to reflect any changes made in the source branch. Git refers to the current branch as HEAD, so you may see this term appear when merging. ![]() The branch that you currently have checked out when you carry out the merge is the destination for the merge. A merge involves a destination branch and a source branch. One thing I didn't make clear in the previous blog is that merge direction is important. This should happen frequently, to minimise the amount of conflicts you have to deal with at one time. A more typical merge scenario is working on a feature or fix branch, and wanting to keep it up to date with changes made by colleagues to the master/ develop/ other serious branch. In fact, with Git, a merge between three branches is possible, but I won't look at this option in this blog. It is the process of pulling the changes made in one branch into another branch. ![]() A merge is an operation carried out between branches. ![]() Merging recapįirstly, a quick recap on the Git merge process. Like the previous posts, this post was written as I learned about the process, and starts from the basics. The next post in the series will continue this theme, looking at resolving conflicts with Semantic Merge, a language-aware diff and merge tool which presents merge information visually. I'll describe when conflicts occur and how they can be dealt with using Visual Studio, and third party Git client SmartGit. By Alice Waddicor Software Engineering Apprentice III 19th June 2014įollowing on from the previous post in this series which dealt with branching and pushing your changes, this post looks at how you can deal with merge conflicts.
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