Описание тега branching-and-merging
In version control, branches represent parallel lines of development. Merging is the action that integrates changes made in different branches.
Modern version control systems (VCS) handle branching and merging by keeping track of incremental differences in data. When a user creates a branch of a project and begins making edits to that branch, only the edits made are tracked (as opposed to the user editing a true copy of the project). When the user have finished making changes to the branch, these edits are applied in order onto the destination of the merge, branches to be made and merged at any time.
Conflicts may arise if multiple changes are made to the same data in a project. Modern VCSs will alert the user and ask them to resolve the merge conflicts (choose which changes should be kept) before completing the merge.