Why merging combines work in Git - See It in Action

Why merging combines work

📖 Scenario: You are working on a team project using Git. Two team members have made changes in separate branches. You want to combine their work into the main branch so everyone has the latest updates.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to merge two branches in Git to combine work from different team members into one branch.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a new branch called feature from main

Make a change in the feature branch

Switch back to main and make a different change

Merge the feature branch into main

Show the combined changes after merging

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Teams use Git merging to combine work from different developers safely and keep the project up to date.

💼 Career

Understanding merging is essential for collaboration in software development and DevOps roles.

1

Create a new branch and add a file

Create a new branch called feature from main and create a file named file.txt with the content Feature work in the feature branch.

Git

# Create and switch to the feature branch
# Create file.txt with content 'Feature work'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git checkout -b feature to create and switch to the new branch. Use echo to create the file and git commit to save changes.

2

Switch to main and add a different file

Switch back to the main branch and create a file named file.txt with the content Main work in the main branch.

Git

git checkout -b feature
echo 'Feature work' > file.txt
git add file.txt
git commit -m "Add feature work file"

# Switch to main branch
# Create file.txt with content 'Main work'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git checkout main to switch back. Then create and commit the new file with different content.

3

Merge feature branch into main

While on the main branch, merge the feature branch into main using the git merge feature command.

Git

git checkout -b feature
echo 'Feature work' > file.txt
git add file.txt
git commit -m "Add feature work file"
git checkout main
echo 'Main work' > file.txt
git add file.txt
git commit -m "Add main work file"

# Merge feature branch into main
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git merge feature while on main to combine the changes.

4

Show the combined file content after merge

Use the cat file.txt command to display the content of file.txt after the merge.

Git

git checkout -b feature
echo 'Feature work' > file.txt
git add file.txt
git commit -m "Add feature work file"
git checkout main
echo 'Main work' > file.txt
git add file.txt
git commit -m "Add main work file"
git merge feature

# Show the content of file.txt
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use cat file.txt to see the combined content after merging.