Introduction Merge conflicts in pull requests block CI/CD pipelines and delay releases. When automated merge is blocked, manual intervention is required to resolve conflicts and re-run the pipeline.

Symptoms - PR shows "Merge conflict" and merge button disabled - CI/CD pipeline cannot proceed to merge/deploy stage - Error: "Branch has conflicts that must be resolved" - Automated deployment blocked by unmerged PR - Conflict appears after another PR was merged

Common Causes - Multiple PRs modifying the same files - Base branch updated after PR was created - Automated code formatting conflicts - Dependency version conflicts - Configuration file modified by multiple teams

Step-by-Step Fix 1. **Fetch latest base branch and rebase**: ```bash git fetch origin git checkout <feature-branch> git rebase origin/main # Resolve conflicts git add <resolved-files> git rebase --continue git push --force-with-lease ```

  1. 1.Use merge instead of rebase for complex conflicts:
  2. 2.```bash
  3. 3.git merge origin/main
  4. 4.# Resolve conflicts
  5. 5.git add <resolved-files>
  6. 6.git commit -m "Merge main into feature"
  7. 7.git push
  8. 8.`

Prevention - Keep PRs small and focused to reduce conflict probability - Rebase PRs on base branch updates before review - Use CODEOWNERS to coordinate changes to shared files - Set up automated conflict detection in CI - Use trunk-based development with feature flags