Question

I want to simulate conflict in git while switching braches without committing.

I have a master branch where I have a few files which are committed.

I create anther branch and modify the files which are also present in the master branch.

I still have not committted changes in the other branch.

But when I try to checkout the master branch It allows me to do the same.

I have not been able to simulate a conflicting scenario.

Can anyone give the file contents and the modified version of the same file which would cause a conflict.

Answer 1

Conflicts happen when merging changes that happened on a same base, so to generate a conflict you need to start a branch from a commit that happened before the last commit of master:

If you have the following you can’t get a conflict because modifications happened sequentially:

* branch tip
|
* master tip
|
* commit a 

There’s nothing to merge, it’s either branch or master.

On the contrary, the following will trigger a merge conflict if branch and master have made modifications on the same portion of a file, because they can be unrelated:

* branch tip
|
| * master tip
|/
* commit a

The conflict will happen on merging branch into master, git won’t be able to say if you want to take the modification of branch or of master, or both.