A developer has finished a bug fix.

In the Guidewire Cloud development lifecycle, maintaining a clean and conflict-free repository is critical. When a developer works on adefect (bug fix) branch, other developers are simultaneously merging changes into theparent branch(e.g., develop or integration).

Before attempting to merge a bug fix back into the parent branch, the developer must firstintegrate the parent branch into their defect branch(Option C). This is usually done via a git pull or git merge of the parent into the local feature branch. This step allows the developer to resolve any code conflicts locally and run GUnit tests against the most recent version of the application code. This "forward-integration" ensures that the final merge into the parent branch is "clean" and does not break the build for the rest of the team.

Option D is the final goal, but it is theactionof merging, not apre-requisitestep. Options A and B are administrative Git actions that do not address the logic of code synchronization and conflict resolution required by Guidewire’s CI/CD standards.