Improve the usability of resolving conflicts using the UI
Proposal
Improve the usability of merging conflicts using the UI. When merging the conflicts using the command line the user has a full understanding on what git
is doing to resolve the conflict.
However merging the conflicts using the UI, it introduces a couple of problems:
- The conflict is resolved in the source branch and not the target branch
- This might confused users as they might expect it to resolve the conflicts in the target branch (e.g., running
git merge source
)
- This might confused users as they might expect it to resolve the conflicts in the target branch (e.g., running
- The commit message is
Merge branch 'target_branch' into 'source_branch'
- This is related to the first issue.
- This causes confusion in the user as they might think it's a bug that GitLab will merge the target branch into the source branch, which is the opposite of what they want.
- Other files might change when resolving the conflict.
- The user is prompted to fix the conflict in certain files.
- GitLab will merge the target branch into the source branch to fix the conflicts.
- This means that other files in the source branch might be updated, depending on the commits of the target branch.
- This causes confusion with the user as we don't have any warnings here that other files might change.
Other than this, it might also be better if we document what the resolve conflicts will do when used via the UI.
Suggestions:
- Add a warning that it might change the other files in the source branch when resolving the conflicts in the UI, depending on the commits of the target branch.
- Add an option to resolve the conflict during merge and apply it to the target branch.
- I think this is what most users would expect with this feature.
- Related issue: #25014
Edited by Julian Paul Dasmarinas