Conflicts can occur when you’re working with multiple development environments and moving changes between multiple pipeline stages. Conflicts can take different forms, and Lifecycle Center (formerly next-generation DevOps Center) provides functionality to help you identify potential conflicts early and resolve them.
Here are some common types of conflicts.
Multiple Work Items That Modify the Same Source File
If you have multiple work items that modify the same source file (particularly in cases where multiple developers are modifying the same metadata components in their own respective development environments), the changes can conflict or potentially overwrite each other when they’re merged into the first integrated pipeline stage. During the promotion process, Lifecycle Center warns you about the potential conflict. In some cases, the source control repository doesn’t know how to reconcile the changes to the same metadata component. Sometimes the promotion is blocked based on a dependency with a shared component.
With Lifecycle Center, you can resolve merge conflicts using Agentforce. Agentforce uses Lifecycle Center MCP tools in the Salesforce DX MCP Server to analyze the conflict and recommend solutions based on natural language prompts. Alternatively, you can resolve the merge conflicts directly in your source repository. See Resolve Merge Conflicts with Lifecycle Center MCP Tools. Lifecycle Center supports stage promotion. If you use custom promotion for individual work items, you can also combine work items that share components or have dependencies.
When Lifecycle Center detects a potential conflict due to work items that share components or contain dependencies, it provides you with the option to combine the work items so you can continue with the promotion. If you don’t choose to combine the affected work items, you can choose to further analyze the potential conflict and fix it manually, or promote the dependent work item first.
Unresolvable Merge Conflict in Two Branches
When a work item or stage is promoted from one pipeline stage to the next, the source files contained in the work item are merged from the first stage’s source control branch to the next stage’s source control branch. The source control system, GitHub, helps to determine if the changes are mergeable before you attempt to promote them. If GitHub detects a conflict, the promotion is blocked.
You can see more information on the merge conflict in the error dialog in the Activity History, and you can view additional details of the conflict in the pull request in the source control system. You can resolve the conflict directly in the source control system or using Lifecycle Center MCP tools. Then, you can attempt the promotion in Lifecycle Center.
Your Component Version Is Different from Merged Component
When you have a stage that contains multiple work items that contain the same component, the stage contains a merged version of the component. If you then choose to promote only one of those work items from the stage to the next stage, it’s possible that the version of the component that you promote is different from the merged component that was tested. DevOps Center (Managed Package) warns you when this situation occurs and provides you the option to combine the changes using the latest version. We recommend that you promote all work items that contain the common component together, so that the next stage contains the same merged version of the component as what was tested in the previous stage.
- Combine Work Items in Lifecycle Center
Use combine work items to prevent conflicts when promoting individual work items with custom promotion. When work items in a stage share metadata or depend on each other, promoting them individually results in conflicts or blocked promotions. - Merge Conflicts
Merge conflicts can occur when multiple work items contain one or more of the same components, especially when multiple developers are making changes that impact the same components in different development environments. Lifecycle Center warns you about potential merge conflicts so you can investigate to ensure that you don’t inadvertently overwrite desired changes. - Resolve Merge Conflicts in Lifecycle Center
Lifecycle Center uses Agentforce to streamline conflict resolution for both low-code admins and developers. By integrating with Agentforce Vibes, Lifecycle Center provides AI-assisted guidance whether you work in the UI or the IDE. - Review and Resolve Conflicts in Your Source Control
In cases where DevOps Center can’t combine work items or you choose not to combine, DevOps Center blocks the promotion. In this case, you manually edit the files directly in your source control to resolve the conflict in the affected branch.