Such a code base is likely to be large and the changes distributed somewhat uniformly across it. This means that conflicts are actually not super likely and als

Such a code base is likely to be large and the changes distributed somewhat uniformly across it. This means that conflicts are actually not super likely and also that your assumptions are not highly likely to get invalidated by the commits that happen in between. If your change does break after merging, it can usually either be quickly fixed with a minor code change or simply reverted immediately.