IntelliJ IDEA: Resolving Merge Conflicts in Git

Aug 15, 2023

IntelliJ IDEA: Resolving Merge Conflicts in Git

When you work in a team, you may come across a situation when somebody pushes changes to a file you are currently working on. If these changes do not overlap, the conflicting files are merged automatically. However, if the same lines were affected, Git cannot randomly pick one side over the other, and asks you to resolve the conflict.
In this screencast, we’re going to take a look at resolving merge conflicts.

For more information, take a look at: https://jb.gg/waysas

*Author: Marit van Dijk

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Content

3.92 -> In this screencast we're going to take a look at resolving merge conflicts.

9.04 -> Let's open the git window using Command + 9 on Mac (or Alt + 9 on Windows and Linux).

15.68 -> Merge conflicts may arise for example when we are working on a feature branch while other changes

21.12 -> have been applied to the main branch. As we can see, we are currently on the main branch. We want

26.8 -> to merge the feature branch into main. We can do so by clicking the feature branch in the git log

32.64 -> and selecting Branch 'feature' > Merge 'feature' into 'main'.

37.44 -> When we do so, IntelliJ IDEA opens a popup telling

41.44 -> us there are Conflicts, as we can also see in the file itself.

42.72 -> The Conflicts dialog offers us several options:

46.64 -> the option to Accept yours which will apply the changes on the current branch

51.12 -> (main) and discard the changes from the other branch (the feature branch)

55.92 -> the option Accept theirs which will apply the changes from the other branch (so, the

60.64 -> feature branch) and discard the changes from main. If you are unsure about which is "yours" and which

67.44 -> is "theirs", note that these are also visible in the table to the left of the buttons and the

72.88 -> branch names are mentioned in brackets. We see that both branches have been Modified. Choosing

79.92 -> either "Accept yours" or "Accept theirs" in this case would discard the changes made on the feature

85.2 -> or main branch respectively. Only choose those options if you want to discard those changes.

91.76 -> the third option here is Merge which we will take a look at in a second.

96.16 -> Note there is a Close button at the bottom.

99.04 -> When we click Close in the Conflicts dialog, we see a notice "feature was Merged with Conflict".

104.64 -> We can click Resolve in this notice to reopen the Conflicts dialog.

109.28 -> Alternatively, when we click the Close button, a Merge Conflicts node will appear

114.24 -> in the Local Changes view. We can open the Commit tab using Command + 0 on Mac

120.32 -> (or Alt + 0 on Windows and Linux). When we open the Changes by clicking on the arrow > we see

126.32 -> the Merge Conflicts node. We can click the Resolve link to reopen the Conflicts dialog.

131.6 -> Now you know how to reopen the conflicts dialog if you accidentally close it.

136.8 -> Because there are changes on both branches that we want to keep, we will use Merge. When we click the

142.16 -> Merge button, the Merge Revisions dialog opens. Here we can see the changes to our current branch

148.24 -> (main) on the left, and the changes that we want to merge from the feature branch on the right.

154.16 -> There is a fully-functional editor in the middle.

156.88 -> We see that there are several changes:

159.6 -> a removed line is shown in grey lines that were added are shown in green

165.2 -> lines that were changed are shown in blue; the changes made are highlighted

171.12 -> conflicts are shown in red For each change we can decide

175.6 -> to Ignore it by clicking the X or to accept it by clicking the arrows >>.

180.8 -> The first change is a removed line. We can Ignore this change, by clicking the X.

186.56 -> We will see that the line is not removed from the middle pane.

190.56 -> This is a mistake however, because we no longer need this import. We can use Command + Z on Mac

197.28 -> (or Control + Z on Windows / Linux) to undo this mistake. Instead, let's accept this

203.52 -> change by the arrows >>, and we'll see that the line is removed from the middle pane.

207.84 -> Depending on the number of changes,

209.68 -> Accepting or Ignoring each change individual change might take some time.

215.44 -> We can automatically merge all non-conflicting changes from the toolbar using Apply All

221.6 -> Non-Conflicting Changes. Alternatively, we can use Apply Non-Conflicting Changes from the Left Side

228.08 -> or Apply Non-Conflicting Changes from the Right Side to merge non-conflicting changes from the

232.64 -> left/right parts of the dialog respectively. Let's accept all. We see that the Left/All/Right

241.04 -> buttons are now greyed out as there are no more non-conflicting changes to apply.

245.44 -> Now we are down to the remaining conflict.

247.68 -> Another way of resolving conflicts is by right-clicking a highlighted conflict in

252 -> the central pane and use the commands from the context menu. When we Accept

257.12 -> either the left or the right that change will be applied and the change on the other side

262.08 -> will remain open. When we choose Resolve using Left and Resolve using Right the changes from

268 -> either the left or right will be applied and the changes from the other side will be ignored.

273.2 -> In this example, we want to combine the changes from both sides, so we need to accept them both.

278.96 -> At this point, IntelliJ IDEA has concluded that all changes have been processed,

283.52 -> so we can choose to Save changes and finish merging which will close this dialog.

288.88 -> However, as we can see from the error highlighting this doesn't look quite right.

293.44 -> The reason here is that both branches have added fields to this record, so we need to fix these

298.96 -> brackets here. It's a good thing the middle pane is a fully-functional editor, so we can edit this

304.16 -> out. There, that looks much better. We can click Apply and are done resolving our merge conflicts.

310.88 -> Thank you for watching!

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgipWkaU2MM