VS Team Explorer merge conflicts

Question

When merging our develop branch into my feature branch develop --> feature in Visual Studio, I get a merge conflict.
I have the possibility to choose from Take Source and Keep Target.

I want to take the file from the develop branch. Which one is the correct option?

Machellemachete

Answer 1

In this case, you should Take Source. The "Source" is the develop branch and the "Target" is the feature branch.

Resign

It's way too ambiguous in Visual Studio which is the source branch and which is the target branch. Microsoft can do better than this - I feel they should throw the branch name on there too. It's just a little too tricky. At least it all works - but the UI in all of the VS merge process could be a bit better. Lots of little UI quirks they could fix. – Waneta

For instance, when doing a merge and resolving conflicts, when you click on one side to check it out, the window auto scrolls down - for what reason I don't know - and you lose your place and have to scroll back up. Just one example of these little problems (perhaps it's by design for some reason - very annoying though). – Waneta

AND, when you do 'compare files', it gives you a nice little sidebar showing you all the red and green areas of each file. But when you click 'merge' to actually do the step through and mark a checkbox next to each change you want to keep, this helpful sidebar guide is no longer there - making it much easier to make a mistake. You have to visually scroll through the whole file and look for any green or red areas, whereas with the guide you could quickly tell 'hey - there's a green area down there, let me scroll to it'. – Waneta

Hopefully Microsoft will enhance it in feature: developercommunity.visualstudio.com/idea/502400/… – Caprine

Answer 2

I found @Kyle Vassella 's comment, above, worked best for me, i.e. use the "Merge"-button. It is simple, powerful and the ambiguity of the other options can be ignored.

I first "Compared files" (or "diff'd" them) using the above UI - just to get a feel for what I was dealing with. In my case, I could have then selected the Master version for one file and the branch for the other one and all would have been fine, but I would have lost a few comment tweaks and some tidying up of the code. Clicking on "Merge" allowed me to view both versions + VisualStudio2017's best guess at what the merged file should look like - its guess was extremely good. I could have just resolved 3 or 4 minor conflicts and accepted everything else. The UI provide buttons to find the next/previous Conflict and the next/previous Change. The former are the main thing, the latter are handy for double-checking everything.

I thought VS2017 Teams GIT lacked proper interactive MERGE capability - I was wrong, once found it is actually surprisingly good and simple to use. Harummph!

Insula