Merge Conflicts

When git merges commits from two different branches or remote repositories, it applies the committed changes from both. In many cases, this works seamlessly, but sometimes it results in merge conflicts. A conflict occurs when the same line(s) in a file were changed in both branches, and git is unsure of which to use.

Git will do several things in this scenario:

  1. It will report as output from that command that caused the conflict which file(s) in the repository contain conflicts, and

  2. It will mark the conflicted sections of those files using a special format that shows the two versions of the code.

An example of such a marking is:

public void PrintSomething() {  
<<<<<<< HEAD
  if(testValue) {
=======
  if(otherTestValue) {
>>>>>>> some_branch
  Console.log("Something...");
}

Here, we see two conflicting versions of one line: if(testValue) { and if(otherTestValue){. Additionally, we see markers delimiting the conflicting sections: <<<<<<< HEAD, =======, and >>>>>>> some_branch. We need to replace all of the code and delimiters with one final version of the code. This could be the first option, the second option, or a combination of the two:

public void PrintSomething() {  
  if(testValue && otherTestValue) {
  Console.log("Something...");
}

We need to do this for all conflicts in all conflicting files. Once they have all been resolved, we need to commit the changes with the command:

$ git commit -a -m "Fixed merge conflicts"