Re: question git & branches

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Aug 29, 2005, 15:03 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0508290754410.3243@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <4312C24E.4000803@candelatech.com>

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005, Ben Greear wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> 
> I think I'm missing something fundamental though...  I wanted to
> change to the ben_dev_rfcnt branch to build a kernel without my
> additional patch.  git branch ben_dev_rfcnt seems to change
> it fine, but all of the changes for repository 'foo' are also
> still here.

"git branch" just creates the branch, it doesn't actually do anything else. Use "git checkout <branchname>" to switch to it.

You can do both with "bit checkout -b <branchname>" which both creates the branch and switches to it.

(Both "git branch" and "git checkout -b <branchname>" that reate a new branch take an optional argument which says what point you want the branch to start at. It defaults to "current state", but you can create a branch at any point in the history by just explicitly stating the commit name that you want to start off with as the head of the branch)

Use "gitk --all" to visualize where the different branches are in the history, and a plain "git branch" with no arguments to list the branches and mark your currently active branch.

				Linus