Practical Application

A safe merge sequence is:

1. Commit or preserve current work.
2. Switch to the branch that should receive changes.
3. Run git status and confirm the working tree is clean.
4. Run git merge <source-branch>.
5. If the merge succeeds, inspect the combined files.
6. If a conflict occurs, open each conflicted file.
7. Choose or construct the final intended content.
8. Remove conflict markers.
9. Stage the resolved files.
10. Commit the resolution.

Example: synchronize development with main, then merge development into main.

git checkout development
git merge main

Review and test the combined development branch. Then:

git checkout main
git merge development

This order allows development to absorb the latest main changes before main receives the completed development work.