How to Resolve a Merge Conflict on GitHub?

Merge conflicts occur when competing changes are made to the same line of a file, or when one person edits a file and another person deletes the same file.

To resolve a merge conflict caused by competing for line changes, you must choose which changes to incorporate from the different branches in a new commit.

For example, if you and another person both edited the file styleguide.md on the same lines in different branches of the same Git repository, you’ll get a merge conflict error when you try to merge these branches. You must resolve this merge conflict with a new commit before you can merge these branches.

Steps to Merge Conflicts

1. Commit your latest code.
2. Get pull from a remote branch, you will see conflicts file shown under your unstage section.
3. Open the file on any editor like eclipse etc.
4. To see the beginning of the merge conflict in your file, search the file for the conflict marker <<<<<<<. When you open the file in your text editor, you’ll see the changes from the HEAD or base branch after the line <<<<<<< HEAD. Next, you’ll see =======, which divides your changes from the changes in the other branch, followed by >>>>>>> BRANCH-NAME. In this example, one person wrote “open an issue” in the base or HEAD branch and another person wrote “ask your question in IRC” in the compare branch or branch-a
5. Decide if you want to keep only your branch’s changes, keep only the other branch’s changes, or make a brand new change, which may incorporate changes from both branches. Delete the conflict markers <<<<<<<, =======, >>>>>>> and make the changes you want in the final merge.
6. Add or stage your changes.
7. Commit and push your changes as per previous slides.

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