How is the merging of two branches in a version control system performed through the merge operation?

Merging two branches in a version control system, such as Git, involves combining changes from one branch into another. When performing a merge:

1. You switch to the target branch (e.g., master).
2. You execute the command git merge <branch_name> to combine changes from the specified branch.
3. Git attempts to automatically merge the changes. If there are no conflicts, the merge completes successfully.
4. If there are conflicts (the same lines changed in both branches), they need to be resolved manually.

Example commands:

git checkout master
git merge feature-branch

After a successful merge, a new merge commit appears in the history, which combines the changes from both branches.