Branching & Merging

Branches let you work on features in isolation without affecting the main codebase. You create a branch, make changes, then merge it back when ready. This is the heart of collaborative Git workflows.

Working with branches

# Create and switch to a new branch
git checkout -b feature/login
# (modern equivalent)
git switch -c feature/login

# List branches
git branch

# Switch between branches
git switch main

# Delete a branch after merging
git branch -d feature/login

Merging

Bring a feature branch's changes into your current branch:

git switch main
git merge feature/login

If both branches changed the same lines, you get a merge conflict that you resolve manually.

Resolving merge conflicts

Git marks conflicts in the file like this:

<<<<<<< HEAD
const title = "Home";
=======
const title = "Dashboard";
>>>>>>> feature/login

Edit the file to keep what you want, remove the <<<, ===, >>> markers, then:

git add conflicted-file.js
git commit

Merge vs Rebase

Two ways to integrate changes:

• Merge creates a merge commit, preserving the branching history.
• Rebase replays your commits on top of the target branch for a linear history.

git rebase main   # replay current branch on top of main