I've only just started to use Git and think it is wonderful, however I'm a little confused over what the merge command does.
Let us say we have a working project in the branch "A".
I go home and make changes to this branch and save it as "B". Another programmer makes changes to "A" and saves it as "C".
Is there a way to merge the two branches "B" and "C" together, then commit the changes as a new branch, say "D"?
Or am missing the point of 'merge'?
merge is used to bring two (or more) branches together.
A little example:
$ # on branch A: $ # create new branch B $ git checkout -b B $ # edit files $ git commit -am "commit on branch B" $ # create new branch C from A $ git checkout -b C A $ # edit files $ git commit -am "commit on branch C" $ # go back to branch A $ git checkout A $ # edit files $ git commit -am "commit on branch A" So now there are three separate branches (namely A, B, and C) with different heads.
To get the changes from B and C back to A, check out A (already done in this example) and then use the merge command:
$ # create an octopus merge $ git merge B C Your history will then look something like this:
…-o-o-x-------A |\ /| | B---/ | \ / C---/ Alternatively, to create "regular" merge commits (with exactly two parents each), run git merge twice for each branch that you want to merge:
$ git merge B $ git merge C To get a history similar to:
…-o-o-x-------M-A |\ / / | B---/ / \ / C---/ If you want to merge across repository/computer borders, have a look at git pull command, e.g. from the PC with branch A (this example will create two new commits):
$ # pull branch B $ git pull ssh://host/… B $ # pull branch C $ git pull ssh://host/… C 
git add conflicting_files and then git commit
If you want to merge changes in SubBranch to MainBranch
git checkout MainBranchgit merge SubBranch
(one the MainBranch) so what this would mean is git merge SubBranch Where SubBranch would be the branch would be the basis of the merge. So any changes to SubBranch would be applied to MainBranch right? Thanks! I tried it outCase: If you need to ignore the merge commit created by default, follow these steps.
Say, a new feature branch is checked out from master having 2 commits already,
Checkout a new feature_branch
Feature branch then adds two commits-->
Now if you want to merge feature_branch changes to master, Do git merge feature_branch sitting on the master.
This will add all commits into master branch (4 in master + 2 in feature_branch = total 6) + an extra merge commit something like 'Merge branch 'feature_branch'' as the master is diverged.
If you really need to ignore this merge commit and add as new commit like 'Integrated feature branch changes into master', Run git merge feature_merge --no-commit.
With --no-commit, it perform the merge and stop just before creating a merge commit, We will have all the added changes in feature branch now in master and get a chance to create a new merge commit as our own.
Edit 2023: You can now have the option to change the merge commit interactively in newer versions of git without specifying the --no-commit option.
Read here for more : https://git-scm.com/docs/git-merge
To change your subBranch to main
git branch -m main <BRANCH>; git fetch origin; git branch -u origin/<BRANCH> <BRANCH>; git remote set-head origin -a 
