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Git Branches Tutorial Notes

Dec 23, 20243 min read

you can have multiple Git branches on your computer but you can only have one “HEAD” branch or the currently “active” or “checked out” branch.

local and remote branches most of the time you are working on local branches.

#1 how to create a branch: git branch my-new-branch

  • create a branch at specific target revision:
git branch other-branch <git-commit-id(first 8 chars)>
  • switching branches
git checkout <other-branch>

you can use git switch to switch branches, checkout has other uses that are more complicated so git switch is a good habit going forward.

  1. Renaming branches
    1. renaming the current HEAD branch
git branch -m <new-name>
  1. rename another branch than HEAD
git branch -m <ubuntu-version> <new-name>

you can rename a remote branch without deleting the old one and just creating a new one.

  1. “Uploading” a local branch for the first time
git push -u origin <local-branch>
  1. Want to track the changes and start working from a remote branch?
git checkout --track origin/feature/downloader

this would bring down the remote branch to be a local branch with the name feature/downloader & the local branch and the remote origin branch with know about each other from the --track parameter

or you can make sure you use -u when push to remote origin for the first time.

Pull & Push

git pull
git push
 
git branch -v

git branch -v will show you if you are ahead or behind

Example

[ahead 1, behind 2]

this mean that on my local branch I have one commit that I haven’t pushed.

and that on my remote branch I have 2 commits that I haven’t pulled.

  1. deleting branches
git branch -d <branch-name>

you can’t delete your HEAD branch

if you have local commits on branch that are not saved anywhere, you have to use --force in order to delete the local branch with untracked commits.

you can delete remote branches with:

git push origin --delete feature/downloader

this will delete the remote feature/downloader branch, remember that if you want to delete a branch, make sure you delete it’s counterpart branch that could be tracking it’s changes.

Merging Branches

Integrating changes from another branch into your current local HEAD branch

git switch <target-branch>
 
 
git merge <branch-with-desired-changes>

Rebasing Branches

instead of integrating changes from a branch, and making a merge commit, you will make the commit history just look like a straight line.

git switch <target-branch>
 
 
git rebase <branch-with-desired-changes>

Comparing Branches

checking which commits are in branch-B, but not in Branch-A

git log main..feature/uploader

Graphical representation of our repo

git log --all --graph

Graph View

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