What is a regular merge?

A regular merge in Git occurs when two branches have diverged, meaning that both branches have new commits that are not present in the other. This type of merge combines the changes from both branches and creates a new commit that represents the merged state.

Key Characteristics of a Regular Merge:

1. Diverged History: A regular merge happens when the branches have different commit histories. For example, if you have a master branch and a feature-branch, and both have new commits since they diverged.

2. Merge Commit: A new commit, known as a merge commit, is created to combine the changes from both branches. This commit has two parent commits: one from each branch.

3. Conflict Resolution: If there are conflicting changes in the same lines of code between the two branches, Git will prompt you to resolve these conflicts manually before completing the merge.

Example

Consider the following commit history:

A -- B -- C (master)
         \
          D -- E (feature-branch)

In this case, both master and feature-branch have diverged after commit C. When you perform a regular merge of feature-branch into master, the history will look like this:

A -- B -- C ------ M (master)
         \      /
          D -- E (feature-branch)

Here, M is the merge commit that combines the changes from both branches.

Command to Perform a Regular Merge

To perform a regular merge, you can use the following command:

git merge feature-branch

If there are no conflicts, Git will create the merge commit automatically. If there are conflicts, you'll need to resolve them before completing the merge.