Master Git in IntelliJ IDEA: Step‑by‑Step Workflow for Team Collaboration

This guide walks through the most common Git operations when using IntelliJ IDEA, focusing on team collaboration, code synchronization, and conflict resolution.

Typical Git workflow in IDEA

Clone a remote repository to your local machine using git clone <SSH‑url> (e.g., via Git Bash).

In IDEA, create a new feature branch (recommended naming: feature_customName) from master using the Local Branches → New Branch menu.

Develop your code, then use the built‑in commit and push button to submit changes directly to the remote repository without a separate add step.

If a conflict occurs, you have two options:

Choose Merge in the pop‑up window to let IDEA attempt an automatic merge.

First pull the latest remote changes, resolve any conflicts manually, then push again.

When the remote master branch has new commits, first synchronize your local master ( pull), then merge it into your feature branch before continuing development.

Below are screenshots illustrating each step:

Common "Push Rejected" problem

The error occurs when the remote branch contains commits that your local branch does not have, causing a divergent history.

Typical scenario: a teammate pushes new commits to the remote branch, you haven’t pulled them, then you try to commit and push and receive a Push Rejected message.

Two ways to resolve it:

Select Merge in the dialog; if there are no conflicts, the merge succeeds automatically.

Before pushing, perform a pull to fetch the teammate’s changes, then resolve any conflicts and push again.

Merge conflict handling

If both you and a teammate modify the same code region, after committing you must choose Merge from the pop‑up. IDEA shows three panes; you need to manually edit the middle pane to decide which changes to keep.

Another frequent case: your teammate has already merged new code into master while your local master is still outdated. Switch to master, run pull to update, then switch back to your feature branch and merge the updated master into it before continuing development.