Git Basic

Branching and Merging

 

Git enable us to maintain multiple versions of project in same working directory through branching. Initially our projects have master branch

              $ git branch   

              * master

We can see that we only have one branch ‘master’ and the ’*’ indicates that we are currently on it




Creating new branches

 

To create a new branch, we can use ‘git branch (branchname)’ which will create a branch at the point we’re currently at.

              $ git branch newbranch

To switch to that branch so that the work we do is saved to it instead of the ‘master’ branch, we run the ‘git checkout’ command’

                    $ git checkout newbranch 

                Switched to branch "newbranch" 

              $ git branch 

              * newbranch

                master

Now we can see that we have a new branch and that we’re on it. Now we can edit files and commit without worrying about messing up our pristine ‘master’ branch that we know works perfectly. We don’t have to share the changes we make in our ‘newbranch’ branch until we are certain they are ready.

Merging and removing finished branches

 

When you are done with work on a branch, you can either remove it and ignore the changes made on it if the work is not acceptable, or you can merge it into one of your long running branches.

$git checkout master 

$ git merge newbranch

Now we navigated to initial states of the project and merged changed corresponding to new branch to the initial version, master.