Merge
~~~~~~

Merge allows you to combine the independent branch developments into a single branch. Git will also try and merge the different branch commit histories together for you.

Let's now view our *Main* branch on Gitlab, notice our new file *README.md* is not there

.. image:: imgs/mainb.png
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   :align: center
.. centered:: Fig 3

We can validate what branch we are on, you should see the asterisk on the *dev* branch
::

    git branch

    * dev
      main

Now using the *checkout* command, switch back to the *main* branch
::

    git checkout main

.. image:: imgs/checkout_m.png
   :scale: 60%
   :align: center
.. centered:: Fig 4

Now we call the branch we want to merge into our current working branch.  We will merge dev into main.
::

    git merge dev

.. image:: imgs/merge_d.png
   :scale: 60%
   :align: center
.. centered:: Fig 5

Remember, this is only a merge locally, you must still push these changes to the remote repository at Gitlab
::

    git push

.. image:: imgs/push_m.png
   :scale: 60%
   :align: center 
.. centered:: Fig 6

Flipping back over to our Gitlab site

.. image:: imgs/main_gitlab.png
   :scale: 60%
   :align: center
.. centered:: Fig 7

From here we can click on History to view commits that have been made

.. image:: imgs/main_gitlab_box.png
   :scale: 60%
   :align: center
.. centered:: Fig 8