Git Branch - All about Branches in Git

One of the biggest strengths of git is its efficient and fast support of 'branches'. Before git, the most popular version systems were CVS and SVN and their branch support was very slow and in-efficient. Hence people used to avoid branches as much as possible.

With git, it is a pleasure to create and work on branches. With git, you can easily find developers creating separate branch for every feature, every release etc.

Git Branch - Basics

This section covers git branching basics covering operations like create, checkout, list, delete, rename etc.

git branch create

You use git checkout to create a new branch by providing -b option.

# create a new branch and switch to branch
git checkout -b branch_name

git branch checkout

git checkout without -b option is used to checkout or switch to existing branch.

# switch to existing branch
git checkout branch_name

git branch list

# list existing branchs
git branch

# list existing branches including remote branches
git branch -a

To see the branches with their last commit, you can use -v option

# list branches with there last commit msg
git branch -v

git branch delete

# delete a local branch
git branch -d branch_name

git branch rename

# rename a local branch
git branch -m old_name new_name

# if you are already on old_name branch, you can omit it
git branch -m new_name

# update remote server with your local branch rename
git push origin :old_name new_name

# fix upstream tracking of remote branch
git checkout new_name
git push origin -u new_name