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This article provides an overview of merging a development branch into the master branch. Often we find ourselves creating a branch outside of the master branch for development.

Once we are happy with the changes, we can merge them into master. The question is, which is the safest way to merge the two?

Git merge the development branch into master

For a simpler context, we will use the following example.

The example below shows a repository with a master branch. We will create a develop branch of master and make some changes.

We will see the safest and cleanest way to merge the develop branch with the master branch.

Some people may disagree, but the safest and cleanest way to merge develop into master is to merge master into development first.

This way you can deal with merge conflicts in your development branch. It will keep your master branch intact until you decide what action to take.

To merge our master into develop , we will first switch to the develop branch and run the command below.

$ git merge master

Output:

In our case, we have some merge conflicts. When resolving conflicts, you may come across sections that require more work.

Since master has not been touched, you can make some more edits and try to merge master into development until you are satisfied. Now we can merge development into master.

Switch to the master branch and run the command below.

$ git merge --no-ff development

The above merge could very well be fast-forwarded. The downside to this is that Git doesn't create a commit node, which means we can't track when and who did the merge.

--no-ffWe fix this by including the flag to create the commit node .

In short, you can merge the develop branch directly with the master branch. However, you can choose the cleaner and safer route and merge master into develop first , fix merge conflicts (if any), and finally merge develop into master.

Include the flag in the last step of creating the commit node --no-ff.