Understanding Conflict Markers in Git: Practical Examples

What are Git Conflict Markers?

When working with Git, conflicts can arise during merges or rebases when two branches have changes that affect the same lines of code. Git uses conflict markers to indicate these issues, helping developers to identify and resolve them promptly.

Example Scenario

Let’s say you have two branches: featureA and featureB. Both branches modify the same line in a file called example.txt:

• featureA changes example.txt to:

  Hello from Feature A!  
  

• featureB changes example.txt to:

  Hello from Feature B!  
  

When you attempt to merge featureB into featureA, Git will detect the conflicting changes. Here’s how the conflict markers will appear in example.txt:

<<<<<<< HEAD
Hello from Feature A!
=======
Hello from Feature B!
>>>>>>> featureB

Breakdown of Conflict Markers

• <<<<<<< HEAD: This marker indicates the start of the changes from the current branch (in this case, featureA).
• =======: This line separates the changes made in HEAD from the changes made in the branch being merged (featureB).
• >>>>>>> featureB: This marker indicates the end of the changes from the branch being merged.

Resolving the Conflict

To resolve the conflict, you need to choose which change to keep or combine both changes. Here’s how you might edit example.txt after resolving the conflict:

Hello from Feature A and Feature B!

Final Steps

After editing the file, you will need to add the resolved file to the staging area and commit the changes:

git add example.txt
git commit -m "Resolved conflict between featureA and featureB"

Conclusion

Understanding conflict markers in Git is essential for effective version control. By familiarizing yourself with how to identify and resolve these conflicts, you can streamline your development process and collaborate more efficiently with your team. Remember, conflicts are a normal part of working with version control, and with practice, resolving them will become second nature.