Re: Really beginner on Version Control

From: Thomas Hochstein <thh@inter.net>
Date: Sep 22, 2010, 07:31 UTC
Message-ID: <gcvg.1009220931.2922@thorondor.akallabeth.de>
In-Reply-To: <1285114417273-5557145.post@n2.nabble.com>

FernandoBasso schrieb:

> For instance, I have 'hello' in line 2 of site.php in the master branch. I
> go to the  testing branch, edit site.php, change 'hello' for 'world' at the
> same line, commit and got back to master. I merge testing into master and I
> get no conflicts. Shouldn't it conflict ?

No.

You have changed "hello" to world in your testing branch. When you merge your testing branch back to your master branch, git will apply all changes you made in testing to master. That's not a problem in that case, as master was not changed since testing was branched from it.

Another example:

You create a testing branch from master. Now you'll go to your testing branch, change "hello" to "world", commit, go back to your master branch and change "hello" to "all" there (and commit). Now you'll get a conflict when trying to merge your testing branch - git will try to apply the change from testing (i.e. change "hello" to "world"), but can't to that as "hello" was already changed to "all" in your master branch. git doesn't know which of this conflicting [1] changes is the right one you'll want to keep, so you have to tell it.

Merging a branch into master will make git try to apply all changes that you made in this branch to the master branch. That's easy if master didn't change since you created your testing branch from it. It's also easy if master _did_ change, but never at the same places as in testing. You'll only get a conflict if you change the same line(s) in master _and_ in testing.

Regards, -thh

[1] That's why it's called a conflict.