Git conflict resolution

Resolving conflicts in Git looks difficult and scary at first, but it's absolutely essential to working in a team. In this repo, you'll find demos and exercises for becoming more comfortable with conflict resolution.

Usage

Run the create-playground.sh shell script to create a playground. Go to the directory /tmp/playground/exercises/ for the exercises.

Usual workflow

A very common workflow is this:

You want to create a new feature, fix a bug, etc.
You update your working copy of the project:

$ git checkout master
$ git pull --rebase

You create a branch for your work:

$ git checkout -b my-new-feature

Every once in a while, you ensure that you are not too far off from master. This is important and conflicts can happen here.

$ git checkout master         # Back to master
$ git pull --rebase           # Pull changes from GitHub
$ git checkout my-new-feature # Go back to your own branch
$ git rebase master           # Try to replay your changes on top of the new master

Useful commands

Here are commands that are useful when you are dealing with a conflict.

git rebase --abort: if things have gone wrong, you can always abort a rebase with this command. You'll still have to deal with the conflict, but this is a nice “restart” feature.
git merge --abort: the same as above, but when you want to abort a merge operation.
git diff myfile: when a conflict occurs, this will show you where the conflict markers (the <<<<<, =====, and >>>>>) are.
git add myfile: after you've dealt with the conflicts in myfile, this will mark myfile as resolved.
git rebase --continue: after you've fixed all conflicts and marked all the files as resolved, this will continue the rebase.

Some general tips

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” as the saying goes. Here are some tips that can help prevent the difficulty of resolving conflicts.

Keep your branches small: small branches touch fewer files and are live for a shorter period of time. This reduces the chances that someone else will introduce changes that will conflict with yours.
Rebase often: Regularly rebase against the master branch (or the branch you forked off of). It's easier and faster to fix a few small conflicts than to fix one large conflict.
Talk to your teammates: It's easier to manage conflicts if you know that large changes are coming than if they appear completely unexpected.

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