Bit bucket shows conflict between "seemingly" similar files

Question

I have a merge conflict on bit bucket with 2 seemingly similar lines. Shown here:

+<<<<<<<
 </beans>
+=======

+</beans>
+>>>>>>>

Please advise on how to address this issue. Thanks

Answer 1

Looks like a simple whitespace discrepancy in this case. Taking either side of the conflict will be fine. However, it is well known that git does not handle merge conflicts intelligently for XML files. You'll likely have to resolve any conflicts manually in the future. To make sure git doesn't accidentally try to merge you XML files and break them, add this to the .gitattributes file of your project:

// .gitattributes
*.xml binary