Branches

what does word branch mean in GIT context ?

Branches !?

if I asked you what does word branch mean I'm sure this image will came into your mind

this is the same thing if I tried to ask google about the word branch this what the result I will get

so GIT also as all of us use this word ( branch ) to describe this image

GIT use branches as a way to describe / arranges your project commits

don't worry by the end of this article you will understand what does this sentence mean but keep this sentence in your mind.

as this image tells to you we have a main branch and some small branches that branch out from that main so in reality we have the main or master branch that contain the tested and released software version and during project lifecycle other colleague will take branches from that main to add some feature then they test it until it reached to stable version then will integrated / merged into the main branch again to add this feature to the full software that will be delivered to the customer.

this is not only the case that branches used but you can create any number of branches you need there is no limit for what branches, its depends on your need and how many colleague work at the same time.

as we see here each circle represent a commit and each row is an index so we have 3 branches each branch start form a specific point from another branch or as we see commit (I) is result from merging X and C commits so this will give you a lot of flexibility to merge multiple features into specific branch then test them without any effect on each feature branch timeline or deliver multible softwares to different customers with minor differences

to understand branches concept and how GIT deals with it

we need return to the first GIT concept where describe how your commit is stored in GIT

as we see here when we create a new branch the both current and created branch will start from the current commit point but the head will depend on the command that you will use will move or not to the new branch

each new commit has a pointer to previous one so this is the way git track all commits in your repo

so when you create a new branch you will create a new pointer that will track all commits in this branch and using the head pointer you can traversal into any commit trough your repo

so you have two options :

the first one (checkout the commit)this will take you to that selected commit

the second one (checkout branch) here the head pointer will point to the last commit in that branch

now we reached to How To section ?

how to create a new branch

$ git branch <Branch_Name>

or you can use -b option with checkout command

$ git checkout -b|-B <new-branch>

# but this command only create a new branch but your head is still in the current branch

$ git checkout <Branch_Name>

# here you are switching to this Branch_Name

how to delete any branch

1 - checkout another branch

then

$ git branch -d <Branch_Name>

if you need to remove it also from the remote repo use the following command

$ git push origin --delete <Branch_Name>

how to change branch name

first you need to checkout this branch

$ git checkout <Branch_name>

then you can change its name by using the following command

$ git branch -m <new Branch_Name>

I hope this article will help you a let bit to understand what is GIT branches mean and how we can deal with it through CMD , also this page will be updated with all messing info. so keep it in your browser favorite.