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Week 4 – Daily Practice Tasks

Branching & Switching

This commnad create a new local Git repository and initialize it

git inti

This commnad initialize, create new branch named master. Before we can create new branches we must commit to this branch:

touch README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "Initial commit with README"

Now we are able to create two branches (feature-a and feature-b).

git branch feature-a
git branch feature-b

For switch branch we can use:

git branch feature-a
git branch feature-a

Now lest update and commit each of them:

git commit -m "update readme"

Simulate and Resolve Merge Simulate

To simulate a merge conflict between two branches, we’ll create the same file in both branches and modify the same line differently in each one.

Step 1: Create and modify the file in feature-a

git switch feature-a
touch file.txt
echo same line feature-a >> file.txt
git add .
git commit -m "file.txt in feature-a"

Step 2: Create and modify the same file in feature-b

git switch feature-b
touch file.txt
echo same line feature-b >> file.txt
git add .
git commit -m "file.txt in feature-b"

Step 3: Merge feature-a into feature-b

git merge feature-a

You should now see a merge conflict message:

Auto-merging file.txt
CONFLICT (add/add): Merge conflict in file.txt
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.

Step 4: Resolve the Conflict Open file.txt in any text editor. It will look like this:

<<<<<<< HEAD
same line feature-b
=======
same line feature-a
>>>>>>> new_branch_to_merge_later

This means:

  • The current changes from your branch (feature-b) are under <<<<<<< HEAD.
  • The incoming changes from the branch you're merging (feature-a) are under ======= to >>>>>>>.

Step 5: Edit the file to resolve the conflict Choose one version or manually combine them. Make sure to remove the Git conflict markers (<<<<<<<, =======, >>>>>>>).

Step 6: Finalize the merge

git file.txt
git commit -m "Resolve merge conflict between feature-a and feature-b"

Rebase and Cherry-Pick

Step 1: Rebase feature-a onto main

# Make sure master is up to date
git checkout master

# Switch to feature-a
git checkout feature-a

# Rebase feature-a onto master
git rebase master

What happens to the commit history? Git takes all the commits from feature-a that are not in master and re-applies them on top of the latest commit in master.

The commit SHAs in feature-a change, because Git "rewrites history" during rebase.

The history becomes linear — it looks as if the work in feature-a started after the latest commit in main.

Step 2: Cherry-pick a commit from feature-b to master

Switch to master:

git checkout master

Get the commit SHA you want to cherry-pick:

git log feature-b

You should see something like:

commit a30629772f5bebcfb84c2a39aba31a81cc5f2c47 (feature-b)
Author: Yosef <yosefkahlon53@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon May 26 12:43:25 2025 +0300

    cherry file

....

Apply that single commit:

git cherry-pick a30629772f5bebcfb84c2a39aba31a81cc5f2c47

Confirm that the cherry-pick worked:

git log master

You should now see:

commit b9aea8259b8847d43c82ecfc15e3338c2b069ab8 (HEAD -> master)
Author: Yosef <yosefkahlon53@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon May 26 12:43:25 2025 +0300

    cherry file

This means the commit from feature-b has been successfully applied to master, with a new SHA.

What are the difference between rebase and merge:

merge combines the work from two branches and keeps the original history — it shows how the work was combined and when. It’s safer and better for collaborative work, but can make the history messy.

rebase takes the changes from your branch and replays them as if they were created on top of the latest commit from the target branch. This creates a clean, straight history, but rewrites the past and should be used carefully.

Stash, Amend, and Cleanup

  • Step 1: Stash Local Changes We made local changes to a file and used git stash to temporarily save them without committing:
git stash push -m "Temporary changes to file.txt"

This removed the changes from the working directory and saved them in the stash stack.

  • Step 2: Restore Stashed Changes We restored the stashed changes using:
git stash pop

This reapplied the latest stash to the working directory and removed it from the stash list.

Step 3: Amend the Last Commit After making additional edits and staging them:

git add file.txt

We amended the last commit to include the new changes:

git commit --amend

This updated the last commit with the new content without creating a new commit. It also allowed editing the commit message if needed.

  • Step 4: Clean Up Merged Local Branches To keep the repository clean, we listed and deleted local branches that had already been merged into main:
git branch --merged main #lists all the local branches that have already been fully merged into the main branch.

git branch -d feature-a
git branch -d feature-b