Resolving merge conflicts in Git - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Resolving merge conflicts

📖 Scenario: You are working on a team project using Git. Two team members have made changes to the same file, causing a merge conflict. You need to resolve this conflict to keep the project moving smoothly.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to identify, resolve, and complete a merge conflict in Git using command line tools.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Git repository with a file named project.txt containing initial content.

Create a new branch called feature and modify project.txt in this branch.

Switch back to main branch and modify project.txt differently.

Attempt to merge feature branch into main and resolve the merge conflict.

Commit the resolved changes and verify the final content.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Merge conflicts happen often when multiple people work on the same code. Knowing how to resolve them keeps projects moving smoothly.

💼 Career

Developers and DevOps engineers must resolve merge conflicts daily to integrate code changes safely and maintain project stability.

1

Create initial Git repository and file

Initialize a new Git repository and create a file named project.txt with the exact content: Initial project setup. Then add and commit this file with the message Initial commit.

Git

# Initialize Git repo and create project.txt
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git init to start the repo, echo to create the file, then git add and git commit.

2

Create feature branch and modify file

Create a new branch called feature using git branch feature and switch to it with git checkout feature. Then change the content of project.txt to exactly Feature branch update. Add and commit this change with the message Update in feature branch.

Git

git init

echo "Initial project setup" > project.txt

git add project.txt

git commit -m "Initial commit"

# Create and switch to feature branch, modify project.txt
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git branch and git checkout to switch branches, then edit the file and commit.

3

Modify main branch and attempt merge

Switch back to the main branch using git checkout main. Change the content of project.txt to exactly Main branch update. Add and commit this change with the message Update in main branch. Then attempt to merge the feature branch into main using git merge feature. This will cause a merge conflict.

Git

git init

echo "Initial project setup" > project.txt

git add project.txt

git commit -m "Initial commit"

git branch feature

git checkout feature

echo "Feature branch update" > project.txt

git add project.txt

git commit -m "Update in feature branch"

# Switch to main, modify project.txt, commit, then merge feature
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Switch back to main, edit and commit the file, then merge feature to see the conflict.

4

Resolve merge conflict and commit

Open project.txt and edit it to contain exactly Resolved content combining main and feature. Then add the file with git add project.txt and commit the merge resolution with git commit -m "Resolved merge conflict". Finally, print the content of project.txt using cat project.txt to verify the final content.

Git

git init

echo "Initial project setup" > project.txt

git add project.txt

git commit -m "Initial commit"

git branch feature

git checkout feature

echo "Feature branch update" > project.txt

git add project.txt

git commit -m "Update in feature branch"

git checkout main

echo "Main branch update" > project.txt

git add project.txt

git commit -m "Update in main branch"

git merge feature

# Edit project.txt to resolve conflict, add and commit
# Then print project.txt content
# Your code here

Need a hint?

After editing the file to resolve the conflict, use git add and git commit. Then use cat to show the file content.