Git Branching, Merging and Conflicts | The Missing Soft.Eng Course

Branching and Merging

A branch allows you to work on different features without messing up the main code. Merging brings all your changes together.

Branches

A branch is like a copy of your project where you can make changes without affecting the main branch.

`branch`

You can check your current branch by typing
```
  git branch
```
Note: Your current branch that you are in will be highlighted is some way
branch will also create a new branch if you insert a name after it
```
  git branch new_branch
```

`checkout`

This lets you switch your branch
```
  git checkout new_branch
```

Pushing to a branch

When creating small feautures, you will want to commit to and push to a branch

Ensure you are in your branch
Commit your changes (With a good comment!)
Then push your branch to GitHub
```
 git push origin new_branch
```

Merging a Branch (Bring Changes to Main)

Switch your working directory to the main
```
 git checkout main 
```
Pull the latest changes
```
 git pull origin main
```
Merge the branch
```
 git merge new_branch 
```

Delete the branch that you merged

 git branch -d new_branch

 ## if you havent merged yet, force delete with 
 git branch -D new_branch

 ## Remove a branch from the GitHub repo
 git push origin --delete new_branch