Knowing about a merge conflict before you try the merge

A small glyph sits between the branch selector and the pull-request tag in the toolbar, answering one question continuously: if the current branch were merged into its target branch right now, would it conflict? The merge is only simulated in memory — nothing is written to the repository — so the answer updates on its own as commits land on either side, with no need to actually attempt (and abort) a merge to find out. It stays quiet whenever there is nothing to report: on the target branch itself, or when the repo has no target branch to compare against. The target defaults to origin/main (or origin/master), configurable per repository in Settings → Repository.

The merge-target indicator warns about a conflict before you merge

Here, a teammate has renamed the same line of a file on the target branch that the current, still-unpublished branch also renamed — from the same starting point, so neither side has seen the other's change yet. The indicator turns amber and its popover names the branch and its target, how far the two have diverged, and which file will conflict — all discovered without ever attempting the merge.

Captured from the running app by this scenario.

Do this

1. Open the merge-target popover

You should see

• The merge-target indicator warns of a conflict
• The merge-target popover reports merging feature/rename-line into origin/main
• The merge-target popover reports 1 commit ahead and 1 behind
• The merge-target popover lists app.txt as a conflicting file

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This page is generated from apps/e2e/features/merge-target.feature, the end-to-end test that drives the feature it describes.