What is a git conflict?

Mar 6, 2015 • Auriel Fournier

Lesson on what a git conflict is, why it occurs and how you can tell it is happening.

My goal with the first question is to see if they understand what a conflict is, otherwise we need to go farther back.

When do conflicts occur?

a. when there are two differing changes to the same item, and the second user tries to merge their commits b. whenever there is a change made to a document when compared back to the old document c. when a user without full permission push a commit

a - the right answer
b - this indicates that they don’t understand version control
c - they are confusing pull requests with commits

My goal with this question is to see if they understand what happens when a conflict happens, which should hopefully also mean they know at least conceptually how to resolve it.

When two files in git conflict what happens? a. the newer file is maintained b. the older file is maintained c. the conflict is highlighted in the document for the person to resolve d. both the new and old file and pasted together into a new file

a & b both demonstrate that they don’t understand how conflicts are resolved and probably think its similar to something like dropbox
c is the right answer
d shows that they don’t understand what a conflict is, or how git is handling them.