Execute an operation on a Branch

This operation performs a merge of the branch into another specified branch. Merging a branch into another one means to add all changes of this branch into the specified target branch as a new single commit.

During a merge operation conflicts may occur. That will be indicated within the branch response with state = IN_CONFLICT. In such a case the conflicts can be solved by the client using the conflictSolvingBranch that points to !<originalBranchId>.

The merges property of the branch response depicts all merges that have been executed and/or attempted. The most recent merge attempt is the one with the highest version number. There may be only one merge attempt that is in progress at any time. All other / older entries in the merges map depict merge operations that have been executed successfully in the past.

Sample:

If a merge operation was started on branch myBranch and ends up in state = IN_CONFLICT the resulting branch response could look like follows:

{
  "id": "myBranch",
  "baseRef": "main:11",
  "state": "IN_CONFLICT",
  "merges": {
    "27": "main:42"
    "15": "main:14"
  }
  "conflictSolvingBranch": "!myBranch"
}

Here "myBranch" is the ID of the branch that was attempted to be merged into branch "main". It was attempted to merge version 27 of myBranch as new commit (with version 42) into the branch "main".

Conflicts occurred during that operation, that is why state = "IN_CONFLICT" and the ID of a "conflictSolvingBranch" with ID "!myBranch" was provided.

That conflict solving branch can be used like any other branch to solve the conflicts by writing to it. All conflicting features in there are marked as such having set conflicting = true in their XYZ namespace.

A branch is like a separate space, which is based on a specific version of the space or on a specific version of some other branch of the space. Reading & writing features to a branch does not have an effect on the main branch or any other branch of the space.

A branch can be created by pointing to a base ref. A base ref consists of the base branch (e.g, "main") and the base version of that base branch. New write transactions to the created branch will continue to increase the version counter starting from the base version. Versions in that branch are independent from the versions of the base branch.