Git 101 - branching

In this article I will be talking about the basics of branching in Git, this is one of most powerful features of Git that allows you to work on multiple things, all at once in complete isolation without disturbing other work.

Creating a branch

Imagine you're currently on your master branch and you decide you want to work on another feature without disturbing your master branch. The way to do this is by creating a new branch:

git branch feat/awesome

Now if you type:

git branch

You'll see that there is now a new branch feat/awesome. Now, if you want to start making commits on this new branch you will have to switch to the new branch first, this is achieved by typing:

git checkout feat/awesome

Git will let you know that the branch has been checked out by outputting:

Switched to branch 'feat/awesome'

A shortcut for the previous two commands also exist (which is what I use most of the time).

git checkout -b feat/awesome

This will create the branch feat/awesome first and then proceed with checking out the new branch immediately.