Source Control (5-3), GitHub Merge: in GitHub, GitHub Desktop, Visual Studio

Note: this article is published on 03/08/2025.

This is a series of articles related to Source Control. If you have read my other articles in this series, you may skip the top general part and jump to INTRODUCTION for the specific topic of this article.

This is a series of articles related to Source Control or Version Control issues, from a stand-alone app, such as MS SourceSafe, to a Server app, such as MS TFS (Team Foundation Server), to web services such as GitHub, AWS, and MS Azure DevOps. We have tried to categorize this series of articles as Source Control or Version Control, but this site does not have these categories. So, we put the articles in the DevOps category, as explained in the Wiki:

DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.[1] DevOps is complementary to Agile software development; several DevOps aspects came from the Agile methodology.

The structure of this article series will cover:

• Stand Alone App:
  • MS Source Safe
• Server App
  • MS TFS (Team Foundation Server)
• Online (Cloud) Centralized Service:
  • MS Azure: DevOps
    • Boards
    • Repos
    • Pipelines
    • Test Plans
    • Artifacts
  • GitHub
  • AWS GitHub Enterprise
• Distributed App:
  • Git

Because these are huge topics, I will not go step by step. Instead, each section will be relatively independent and will become a reading unit.

• Source Control (1), MS Source Safe --- Stand Alone App 
• Source Control (2), MS TFS --- Centralized Server App 
  • Source Control (2-1), TFS --- Comparison
  • Source Control (2-2), TFS --- Merge 
  • Source Control (2-3), TFS --- Shelving
• Source Control (3), MS Azure DevOps (GitHub, Jira) --- Centralized Service
  • Source Control (3-1), DevOps and Different Products
• Source Control (4), Git --- Distributed App
  • Source Control (4-1), Git --- Configuration 
  • Source Control (4-2), Git --- Configured to Connect to DevOps and GitHub 
  • Source Control (4-3), Git --- Cherry Pick in Visual Studio
  • Source Control (4-4), Git --- Recover Git Tree: Reflog/Reset
  • Source Control (4-5), Git --- Recover Deleted Branch
  • Source Control (4-6), Git --- Revert 
  • Source Control (4.7), Git --- Get Specific Version or Commit 
  • Source Control (4.8), Git --- Get Specific Version or Commit in practice
  • Source Control (4.9), Git --- Merge: Fetch, Pull, Push and Sync
    • Source Control (4-9-1), Git - Merge in Server Side 
    • Source Control (4-9-2), Git - Merge in Client Side
    • Source Control (4-9-3), Git - Merge in Concept 
• Source Control (5), GitHub access (setup connection) 
  • Source Control (5-1), Create a Git Hub Repository from Visual Studio
  • Source Control (5-2), GitHub Extension for Visual Studio 
  • Source Control (5-3), GitHub Merge: in GitHub, GitHub Desktop, Visual Studio --- this article
• Source Control (6), DevOps access (setup connection)
• Source Control (7), GitLab access (setup connection and Clone to Local) 
  • Source Control (7-1), GitLab Extension for Visual Studio
  • Source Control (7-2), Setup SSH Key for GitLab
• Source Control (8), Git, Azure Repos, and Visual Studio (Interaction)
• Source Control (9), Push into Git Hub and DevOps 
• Source Control (10), Git Hub, DevOps Publish

A - Introduction

This article is a brief summary of GitHub merge from Visual Studio, GitHub, and GitHub Desktop:

• A -  Introduction
• B - Merge from Visual Studio
• C-  Merge from GitHub Desktop
• D - Merge from GitHub

We want to merge Branch Main to Branch dev-hpes-sprint-83

B - Merge from Visual Studio

Make the target branch as current:

Click Merge 'main' into 'dev-hpes-sprint-83' => Get the merge window:

Merge:

We got the conflict items to be handled.

C-  Merge from GitHub Desktop

Make the target branch as current:

Click Branch Tab => Compare to branch (we can use Merge into current branch directly)

Choose Merged Branch: main

We got the differences => Click Create a merge commit

You should handle the conflicts before creating a merge commit.

D -  Merge from GitHub

Make a new Pull Request:

Got the differences:

Create a Pull Request, 

Then, merge.