7 Solving conflicts

As noted in the previous section, sometimes when you git pull from another branch or from the same remote one (if you are missing some changes), you can find conflicts. A conflict looks like this:

<<<<<<< HEAD
this is my content
that I just added
=======
this is some different conflicting content
from the branch I pulled from
>>>>>>> some_branch_name

So in a conflict, there are at least three lines the were added by git to separate the conflicting parts. The conflict starts at the line <<<<<<< HEAD, and until we get to the ======= line, the lines in between are the content we added. Then from this one until the end >>>>>>> some_branch_name, the lines in between are the content that someone else added and we did not have yet. Then solving a conflict essentially means removing these three lines added by git. We have three options here. You will have to decide which one you want depending on the situation:

Keep only our content. Solving the conflict would involve removing all lines except:
```
this is my content
that I just added
```

Keep only the other content. We remove everything except:

this is some different conflicting content
from the branch I pulled from

Keep some (or all) content from both parts, or even adapt it adding other things. We remove the three lines added by git and everything else we do not want to keep, leaving something like a mix:
```
this is my content
that I just added
this is some different conflicting content
```

If you have to find conflicts (I advise to do it manually), you could use some text finding tool in your editor, and look for the text HEAD, as this always appears in the first line of a conflict. After you solved all conflicts, you have to do the rest of the steps explained in previous sections, involving git add and git commit, because a pull also counts as a code change, so you have to make a commit from it. In case you are wondering, when you perform a pull without conflicts, you are not creating a commit yourself but git does it for you, automatically. So whether you solved the conflicts or git did it for you, there will always be a commit representing it.