Resolve merge conflicts

Learn why conflicts happen and how to resolve them.

Step 3: Create your own conflict

Good job! You've solved a merge conflict! 🎉

Resolving a conflict doesn't automatically merge the pull request in GitHub. Instead, it stores the resolution of the conflict in a merge commit and allows you and your team to keep working. To resolve a conflict, GitHub performs what is known as a reverse merge. This means that the changes from the main branch were merged into your my-resume branch. With a reverse merge, only the my-resume branch is updated. This allows you to test the resolved changes on your branch before you merge it into main.

Now, let's get a little evil. (It's for educational purposes!)

⌨️ Activity: Create your own conflict

We went ahead and added a new file called references.md and pushed that change to main, without updating your my-resume branch.

1. Browse to the my-resume branch.
2. Click the Add file dropdown menu and then on Create new file.
3. Create a file named references.md.
4. Enter some text that conflicts with what we added for references.md in the main branch.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and enter a commit message for your change.
6. Click the Commit new file button, making sure the "Commit directly to the my-resume branch" option is selected.
7. Wait about 20 seconds then refresh this page (the one you're following instructions from). GitHub Actions will automatically update to the next step.

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