Merging Branches

Call ‘git fetch’ if necessary to fetch refs from other repositories, then

git checkout <branchToContinue>

so the current branch is the one that will persist.

To check if the merge will require merge resolution or not, use

git merge --no-commit <branchToMerge>
git merge --abort

Finally, call

git merge <branchToMergeAway>

to merge that branch into the current branch. This may require some merge resolution.

If the merge fails and now is not a convenient time to resolve merge conflicts, abandon the merge with

git reset --hard HEAD

Deleting a Branch

git branch -d <branchname>
git push origin :<branchname>

The first command deletes the local branch and the second deletes the copy on the repository.

Remember these deletions are only pointers and the commits remain, although a ‘dangling commit’ will eventually be removed by garbage collection.