Resolve Conflicts
When collaborating with others on a big project, sometimes it occurs that someone's change conflicts with another change introduced in the meantime (e.g by another person).
First of all: Do not panic! You should be able to resolve merge conflicts with a little time and patience.
While it is a good idea to rebase your branch before creating a pull request, as described in the article on Pull requests and Git flow, sometimes merge conflicts are unavoidable.
This article will explain what to do in case of a merge conflict, and how to resolve it using the command line.
Unfortunately, Forgejo currently does not provide a GUI to resolve conflicts.
An issue in the Gitea upstream repository of Forgejo, #9014, requests this feature.
If you want to skip the setup of the examples, you can skip to the sections explaining the resolutions:
Example of a conflict, and its resolution
To understand the steps to be taken during the resolution of a conflict, let's actually create an example of such a conflict:
Clone example repository
This example uses Knut's example repository. Let us create a clone of Knut's examples repository for this example:
git clone git@codeberg.org:knut/examples.git
cd examples
We will not change anything on the main branch just now.
Create a branch with a change
Here, we're creating another branch with our first commit:
git switch -c add-link-to-readme
In the README.md
file, we change the line
An example repository for Codeberg Docs.
to
An example repository for [Codeberg Docs](https://docs.codeberg.org).
Now, we'll add the change to our branch:
git add README.md
git commit -m "Added link to Codeberg docs in README"
We will leave the branch. We won't merge it into main
just yet.
Create another branch with a different change
Now, we'll create another branch based on main
, and edit the README.md
file in a different way:
git switch main
git switch -c update-last-sentence-in-readme
Again, we'll change the last line, but this time, we'll adjust the text differently, from
An example repository for Codeberg Docs.
to
An example repository to use with the Codeberg Documentation.
git add README.md
git commit -m "Adjusted last sentence in README"
We now have two branches with conflicting changes to the same line:
git switch main
git branch
add-link-to-readme
* main
update-last-sentence-in-readme
Merging the first branch
Now, we want to merge both of the branches into the main
branch.
First, we merge the branch named add-link-to-readme
. As this is a simple change to a yet unchanged main
-branch, there is no conflict.
git switch main
git merge add-link-to-readme
Attempting to merge the second branch
Let's try to merge the second branch.
git merge update-last-sentence-in-readme
As expected there is a conflict:
$ git merge update-last-sentence-in-readme
Auto-merging README.md
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in README.md
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.
Issuing git status
shows us that there are unmerged paths.
$ git status
On branch main
You have unmerged paths.
(fix conflicts and run "git commit")
(use "git merge --abort" to abort the merge)
Unmerged paths:
(use "git add <file>..." to mark resolution)
both modified: README.md
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
Issuing git diff
shows the conflict:
diff --cc README.md
index 616dc84,088249f..0000000
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@@ -1,3 -1,3 +1,7 @@@

++<<<<<<< HEAD
+An example repository for [Codeberg Docs](https://docs.codeberg.org).
++=======
+ An example repository to use with the Codeberg Documentation.
++>>>>>>> update-last-sentence-in-readme
You have to resolve this conflict manually, as Git doesn't know how the resulting line should be.
Resolving the conflict
Use your favourite text editor to open the file. The editor will show you the conflict. Git actually added the conflict description into the README.md
file.
The end of the file now looks like this:
<<<<<<< HEAD
An example repository for [Codeberg Docs](https://docs.codeberg.org).
=======
An example repository to use with the Codeberg Documentation.
>>>>>>> update-last-sentence-in-readme
The conflict description starts with <<<<<<< HEAD
.
The next line shows you that the current HEAD
(the last commit on the main
branch before we ran git merge update-last-sentence-in-readme
) was:
An example repository for [Codeberg Docs](https://docs.codeberg.org).
The next line, =======
seperates the current line from the line proposed in the branch that is to be merged.
An example repository to use with the Codeberg Documentation.
The last line >>>>>>> update-last-sentence-in-readme
concludes the conflict description and tells you that the line(s) before are taken from the branch update-last-sentence-in-readme
.
Use your editor of choice, and change the line to reflect the changes you wish to commit to the repository after the resolution of the conflict.
Remove all other lines, then the file should be in the form that you want to commit to the main branch.
A possible resolution of this conflict could be:
An example repository to use with the [Codeberg Documentation](https://docs.codeberg.org).
Calling git diff README.md
shows the new line was added, and the two conflicting lines were removed:
diff --cc README.md
index 616dc84,088249f..0000000
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@@ -1,3 -1,3 +1,3 @@@

- An example repository for [Codeberg Docs](https://docs.codeberg.org).
-An example repository to use with the Codeberg Documentation.
++An example repository to use with the [Codeberg Documentation](https://docs.codeberg.org).
You can now mark the conflict as resolved, by calling git add README.md
.
If you have more than one conflict in one or more files, repeat the resolution process until all conflicts are resolved.
Make sure not to leave any lines starting with <<<<<<<
, =======
, and >>>>>>>
, as Git no longer knows that these are special and will treat them as normal text.
Issuing git commit
without any comment will open the default editor, and lets you edit a commit message for the merge commit.
Closing the editor will complete the resolution of the merge conflict.
git log
shows you both the original commit that lead to the conflict and the merge commit.
For example:
commit c10f2c3338979149d7c6fcb815a2072743b5bde6 (HEAD -> main)
Merge: 5e2cebd 7b5bf4f
Author: Knut <knut@...>
Date: Sat May 21 19:44:43 2022 +0200
Merge branch 'update-last-sentence-in-readme' into main
commit 7b5bf4f0fe2213ded938bc9de313f4cd3d9043db (update-last-sentence-in-readme)
Author: Knut <knut@...>
Date: Sat May 21 18:38:16 2022 +0200
Adjusted last sentence in README
commit 5e2cebd523754b655d1990fb48dbb7b973f07dfa (add-link-to-readme)
Author: Knut <knut@...>
Date: Sat May 21 18:29:15 2022 +0200
Added link to Codeberg docs to README
Note the line starting with Merge
; it includes the commit IDs of the two merged commits.
Removed files
Let's create another conflict.
We'll start again at the main
branch. If you didn't work through the example above, you can jumpstart the environment for this example with these commands:
git clone git@codeberg.org:knut/examples.git
cd examples
If you're still on another branch from the last example, make sure that you start this example on the main
branch, by running git switch main
.
Removing a file
Again, we'll create a new branch.
git switch -c remove-README-file
This time, we'll remove the README.md
file.
git rm README.md
git commit -m "removed README.md"
We won't merge this branch yet.
Editing the file
First switch back to the main branch.
git switch main
On second branch we add a line to the end of the README.md
file.
git switch -c adapt-README-file
echo "You can find this repository in the Forgejo Web GUI at https://codeberg.org/knut/examples" >> README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "added repository url to README.md"
Merging the first branch
Again, switch back to the main branch.
git switch main
Merging the first branch does not lead to a conflict, because the main
branch didn't change since the branch remove-README-file
was created.
git merge remove-README-file
Conflict and resolution
When we try to merge the second branch adapt-README-file
, we get a conflict because the file we are trying to change, README.md
was removed by our previous merge.
$ git merge adapt-README-file
CONFLICT (modify/delete): README.md deleted in HEAD and modified in adapt-README-file. Version adapt-README-file of README.md left in tree.
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.
git status
also shows the conflict:
$ git status
On branch main
You have unmerged paths.
(fix conflicts and run "git commit")
(use "git merge --abort" to abort the merge)
Unmerged paths:
(use "git add/rm <file>..." as appropriate to mark resolution)
deleted by us: README.md
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
You now have two choices:
- Keep the current status and remove the README.md file
- Re-introduce the README.md file into the
main
branch.
To keep the current status and remove the README.md file, you must tell Git once more to remove it:
git rm README.md
To re-introduce the README.md file, simply add it again:
git add README.md
Use git commit
if you've resolved all conflicts (in this case it was only one).
As with before, issuing git commit
without any comment will open your default editor, and ask you to provide a commit message for the merge commit.
Tips
- Try to avoid using
git push -f
on the target branch. - Ensure that all branches are pushed to a remote repository before trying to resolve a conflict, as it makes it easier to start over in case you run into a problem.
- Search for
<<<<<<<
,=======
and>>>>>>>
in the resolved files, in order to not leave a conflict description in your files.
Hey there! 👋 Thank you for reading this article!
Is there something missing, or do you have an idea on how to improve the documentation? Do you want to write your own article?
You're invited to contribute to the Codeberg Documentation at its source code repository, for example, by adding a pull request or joining in on the discussion in the issue tracker.
For an introduction on contributing to Codeberg Documentation, please have a look at the Contributor FAQ.
© Codeberg Docs Contributors. See LICENSE