Exactly, in fact it normally does. git pull is actually really useful for enforcing this most of the time. If you inadvertently do a 'git pull' before doing a

Exactly, in fact it normally does. git pull is actually really useful for enforcing this most of the time. If you inadvertently do a 'git pull' before doing a commit, and you have any overlapping changes, then git aborts the merge. This is why 'git pull' is generally a safe operation.