Git branching

Creating a New Branch

git branch <branch name>
git branch testing

HEAD is a pointer to the local branch you’re currently on. The git branch command only created a new branch — it didn’t switch to that branch. So you’re still on master branch instead of the new branch.

Switching Branches

git checkout testing

This moves HEAD to point to the testing branch.

Creating a new branch and switching to it at the same time

git checkout -b <branch name>

Branch Merging

Merge iss53 branch into master * check out the branch you wish to merge into * run the git merge command

git checkout master
git merge iss53

%%{init: { 'logLevel': 'debug', 'theme': 'base' } }%%
---
title: git merge
---
gitGraph
   commit
   commit
   branch iss53
   checkout iss53
   commit
   commit
   checkout main
   commit
   merge iss53
   commit
   commit

Branch Management

Listing Current Branches

git branch
git branch -v # (1)
git branch -a # (2)

1. To see the last commit on each branch
2. To see all branch including remote branches (remote branches are in red)

Changing a branch name

git branch --move bad-branch-name corrected-branch-name # (1)
git push --set-upstream origin corrected-branch-name # (2)
git push origin --delete bad-branch-name # (3)

1. Rename the branch locally
2. Push the change
3. Delete the branch with the bad name

Remote Branches

Remote-tracking Branch

• Remote-tracking branches are references to the state of remote branches. They’re local references that you can’t move; Git moves them for you whenever you do any network communication, to make sure they accurately represent the state of the remote repository. Think of them as bookmarks, to remind you where the branches in your remote repositories were the last time you connected to them.
• Remote-tracking branch names take the form <remote>/<branch>
  • the master branch on your origin remote: origin/master
  • a partner pushed up an iss53 branch: might have your own local iss53 branch, but the branch on the server would be represented by the remote-tracking branch origin/iss53

Tracking Branch

• Tracking branches are local branches that have a direct relationship to a remote branch.
• When you clone a repository, it generally automatically creates a master branch that tracks origin/master.

set up other tracking branches

git checkout -b <branch> <remote>/<branch>

set up tracking branch for a existing local branch

git branch -u origin/serverfix
git branch --set-upstream-to origin/serverfix

list tracking branches you have set up

git fetch --all; git branch -vv
  iss53     7e424c3 [origin/iss53: ahead 2] Add forgotten brackets
  master    1ae2a45 [origin/master] Deploy index fix
* serverfix f8674d9 [teamone/server-fix-good: ahead 3, behind 1] This should do it
  testing   5ea463a Try something new

Deleting Remote Branches

git push origin --delete serverfix # (1)

1. delete your serverfix branch from the server

Rebasing

With the rebase command, you can take all the changes that were committed on one branch and replay them on a different branch.

check out the experiment branch and then rebase it onto the master branch

git checkout experiment # (1)
git rebase master # (2)
git checkout master # (3)
git merge experiment # (4)

1. check out the experiment branch
2. rebase it onto the master branch
3. go back to the master branch
4. do a fast-forward merge

rebase the server branch onto the master branch without having to check it out first

git rebase master server # (1)
git checkout master # (2)
git merge server # (3)

1. git rebase <basebranch> <topicbranch>
2. go to the master branch
3. fast-forward the base branch (master)