1: Update from the main branch
2: Resolve merge conflicts — you’re here 📍
3: Cleaning up your branch
Resolve merge conflicts
When you work together with teammates on designs, conflicts are natural. You can reduce how many you see, but a few will pop up from time to time. Regardless, conflicts can be stressful, so here’s how to resolve them.
Choose which artboards to keep
When you select the artboards you want to keep the Update Branch screen, those artboards replace the ones in your current branch.
Choose the artboards from the main branch
If you choose the artboard(s) from the main branch (or parent branch), the work you did in your branch is overwritten by what you saw on the conflict screen. You might need to do little work in your files after your branch has been updated in order to get some of your designs back. The benefit of choosing the main branch is that you know you won’t overwrite someone else’s work — you take it upon yourself to do the fixing.
Choose the artboards from your current branch
If you choose the artboard(s) from your current branch or child branch, your artboards remain as they appear in your branch. You can continue to design in your files and you won’t have to do anything to get your previous designs back. However, this is a conscious choice to overwrite the updates that your teammate made to the main branch; you won’t have another opportunity to choose their designs. In this case, make sure that you know which designs belong in the main branch. (You can still fix it later if you discover that you should have chosen the main branch version.)
Resolve merge conflicts in the update branch view
For each conflict, you can choose individual artboards to keep by clicking Pick Layer below the artboard you want. Continue this process until all conflicts are resolved.
When resolving multiple conflicts, you also have the option to choose batches of artboards to keep. For each of these batches, you must choose either everything on the main branch or everything on your current branch.
There are three options for batch resolving conflicts:
- All items on this page
- All items in this file
- All items in this update
After making your selection and resolving all conflicts, Abstract prompts you to confirm and commit.
Work around merge conflicts
If you’ve done a lot of work in your branch that you don’t want to be overwritten but you’re not certain whether you should ignore the changes on the main or parent branch, there’s a way to keep both options until you’re ready to reconcile them.
- After entering the update branch screen, take note of the artboards that have merge conflicts.
- Click the blue X to close out of the update branch flow.
- In your branch’s file(s), make duplicates of the artboards that had conflicts.
- Close the file(s).
- Go back to the update branch flow by clicking the Update from Main… button again.
- This time, select all the artboards from the main branch and confirm the update.
- Your file now has the updates from the main branch on the original artboards and your designs on the duplicated artboards.