Branch

Git · Reference cheat sheet

📖 Overview

Branches are movable pointers to commits. Create feature branches for isolated work, switch with switch/checkout, and delete when merged. Track remote branches with upstreams for pull/push defaults.

🧩 Core concepts

• Local branch — ref under refs/heads/.
• Remote-tracking branch — e.g. origin/main under refs/remotes/.
• Upstream — -u / --set-upstream-to links local ↔ remote for defaults.
• Detached HEAD — checked out commit is not a branch tip; create a branch before committing.
• Naming — feature/…, fix/…, chore/… conventions help navigation.
• Protection — host rules may block force-push/delete on main.

💡 Examples

# List
git branch
git branch -vv
git branch -a

# Create and switch
git switch -c feature/checkout
# equivalent: git checkout -b feature/checkout

# Switch existing
git switch main

# Create from remote tip
git switch -c feature/api origin/feature/api

# Rename
git branch -m feature/checkout feature/cart

# Delete local (merged)
git branch -d feature/cart
git branch -D feature/cart   # force

# Set upstream
git push -u origin feature/cart
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/main main

⚠️ Pitfalls

• Deleting a branch does not delete unmerged work until GC — recover via reflog soon.
• Working on detached HEAD loses easy branch pointers — git switch -c immediately.
• Stale remote-tracking branches linger until git fetch --prune.
• Long-lived branches drift — rebase or merge from main regularly.

🔗 Related

• Commit
• Merge
• Rebase
• Push
• Pull