Steps — Stage 6: Merge the Branch

Prerequisites

Completed Stage 5. You are on dark-theme with four commits.

Steps

1. Switch to main

git checkout main

Look at git branch — asterisk is on main now. Run git log --oneline — three commits, not four. The dark theme commit lives on dark-theme only.

2. Reload the page

Open index.html in the browser. The light theme is back.

This is the moment the whole branching concept clicks. You did real work on dark-theme, but main was completely unaffected. If you had committed the dark theme directly on main instead, you would have no escape route.

3. Merge dark-theme into main

git merge dark-theme

Git prints something like Fast-forward and lists the file change. This is a fast-forward merge — Git just moved the main label up to where dark-theme already was, because main had no newer commits of its own.

4. Reload the page

Refresh the browser. The dark theme is now on main. You have successfully promoted your experiment to the main version.

5. Confirm the history

git log --oneline

Four commits. git log --oneline --graph --all shows that main and dark-theme now point at the same commit.

Verify

• You are on main.
• git log --oneline shows four commits, including the dark theme one.
• The page on main shows the dark theme.
• git status is clean.