How can I switch to another branch in git?
Which one of these lines is correct?
git checkout 'another_branch'
or
git checkout origin 'another_branch'
or
git checkout origin/'another_branch'
And what is the difference between them?
If another_branch
already exists locally and you are not on this branch, then git checkout another_branch
switches to the branch.
If another_branch
does not exist but origin/another_branch
does, then git checkout another_branch
is equivalent to git checkout -b another_branch origin/another_branch; git branch -u origin/another_branch
. That's to create another_branch
from origin/another_branch
and set origin/another_branch
as the upstream of another_branch
.
If neither exists, git checkout another_branch
returns error.
git checkout origin another_branch
returns error in most cases. If origin
is a revision and another_branch
is a file, then it checks out the file of that revision but most probably that's not what you expect. origin
is mostly used in git fetch
, git pull
and git push
as a remote, an alias of the url to the remote repository.
git checkout origin/another_branch
succeeds if origin/another_branch
exists. It leads to be in detached HEAD state, not on any branch. If you make new commits, the new commits are not reachable from any existing branches and none of the branches will be updated.
UPDATE:
As 2.23.0 has been released, with it we can also use git switch
to create and switch branches.
If foo
exists, try to switch to foo
:
git switch foo
If foo
does not exist and origin/foo
exists, try to create foo
from origin/foo
and then switch to foo
:
git switch -c foo origin/foo
# or simply
git switch foo
More generally, if foo
does not exist, try to create foo
from a known ref or commit and then switch to foo
:
git switch -c foo <ref>
git switch -c foo <commit>
If we maintain a repository in Gitlab and Github at the same time, the local repository may have two remotes, for example, origin
for Gitlab and github
for Github. In this case the repository has origin/foo
and github/foo
. git switch foo
will complain fatal: invalid reference: foo
, because it does not known from which ref, origin/foo
or github/foo
, to create foo
. We need to specify it with git switch -c foo origin/foo
or git switch -c foo github/foo
according to the need. If we want to create branches from both remote branches, it's better to use distinguishing names for the new branches:
git switch -c gitlab_foo origin/foo
git switch -c github_foo github/foo
If foo
exists, try to recreate/force-create foo
from (or reset foo
to) a known ref or commit and then switch to foo
:
git switch -C foo <ref>
git switch -C foo <commit>
which are equivalent to:
git switch foo
git reset [<ref>|<commit>] --hard
Try to switch to a detached HEAD of a known ref or commit:
git switch -d <ref>
git switch -d <commit>
If you just want to create a branch but not switch to it, use git branch
instead. Try to create a branch from a known ref or commit:
git branch foo <ref>
git branch foo <commit>
Switching to another branch in git. Straightforward answer,
git-checkout - Switch branches or restore working tree files
git fetch origin <----this will fetch the branch
git checkout branch_name <--- Switching the branch
Before switching the branch make sure you don't have any modified files, in that case, you can commit the changes or you can stash it.