Working with git branches

Learn how to perform basic tasks with git local and remote branches

• Clone a repo
• Show current branch
• Create a local branch
• Create a remote branch
• Change branch
• Merge two branches
• Delete a local branch
• Show remote branches
• Checkout existing remote branch
• Update local branch from remote
• Delete a remote branch
• See also

Launch all the commands in this tutorial, from the first to the last, and you will cover almost all operations on branches.

Clone a repo

First of all, since we are going to talk also about remote branches, you need to clone a repo. For instance, suppose I am cloning a brand new repository I just created on GitHub.

git clone https://github.com/myuser/mynewrepo.git
cd repo

Show current branch

The first command you need to know in order to use git branches will answer the question

Which is current branch?

The answer is easy, just launch

git branch

Since this is a new repository you should see only the master branch.

Create a local branch

Create a new develop branch and switch to it

git checkout -b develop

Now you are on develop branch, add or edit some file, the README.md for instance, so the below merge command will make sense. Use your favourite editor, that is vim of course!

Do some modification and commit

git commit -am 'added repo infos'

Create a remote branch

Just push the local branch to remote origin.

git push origin develop

Change branch

If you want to go back to master branch launch

git checkout master

Merge two branches

If you want to merge develop into master, launch

git merge develop

Delete a local branch

If you want to delete develop branch locally, launch

git branch -d develop

Show remote branches

Branch develop on remote origin still exists, see

git branch -r

Checkout existing remote branch

When you clone a repo by default git branch will show only master branch. Suppose you want to work on a remote develop branch, launch this to check it out

git checkout -b develop origin/develop

Now you have again a local develop branch and it is your current branch.

Update local branch from remote

If you want to fetch last version of your remote develop branch and merge it to your local develop branch, launch

git pull origin develop

Since in this case there is no difference between remote and local develop branch, git will answer with an Already up-to-date message.

Delete a remote branch

Suppose you want to delete develop remote branch, launch

git push origin :develop

Note that this will not remove your develop local branch.

See also

• Git shell Windows tips
• Git extras on Windows