Git Branches

Creating a New Branch

$ git branch
$ git branch (name of new branch)
$ git checkout (name of new branch)
$ git push origin (name of new branch)

Merging branched branches to master

Situation:

• You have a master branch, a feature branch, and a feature2 branch that branches from the feature branch (NOT master)

• How do you safely merge the feature branch and feature2 branch into master and delete these branches?

Concept:

1. Open PR for feature branch

2. Get code review back for feature and add and commit to feature as you resolve the code review

3. As you add and commit to feature, you have to also keep feature2 in sync with feature. So as you add and commit in feature, git pull in feature2 from feature

4. Once the code reviews are completed, merge feature branch into master

5. You cannot delete feature branch yet since feature2's parent branch is feature

6. Go to the PR for feature2 and change feature2's parent branch to master using the dropdown on Github

7. Now, feature2 only depends on master, so you can now go to the PR for feature and safely delete the feature branch

8. Now do code review for feature2 and merge into master.

9. Delete feature2.

Keeping child branches up to date with the parent

1. Git checkout into parent branch and pull

$ git checkout parent-branch
$ git pull

1. Git checkout into child branch and pull

$ git checkout child-branch
$ git merge origin/parent-branch

1. Solve any merge conflicts and push commit.

Get parent branch

Note that this functional is kinda "hacky" and is not a solid solution. It just finds the branch that was merged closest.

git log origin/master --pretty=format:'%D' origin/<branch_name>^

Get branch stats different from master

git diff master origin/<branch_name> --shortstat