git > branching

3 min readJun 8, 2020

abstract

The concern is to document the branching git workflow with the step into pull requests on GitHub. This can be abbreviated as cloning 🠊 branching 🠊 pushing 🠊 merging 🠊 fetching 🠊 merging.

(1) init notes

the following is a personal analysis of Git Feature Branch Workflow ~ Atlassian Git Tutorial
… which is a git workflow, where to work on anything, really, you do the work in your own branch and merge it at an opportune moment, at a proper “junction”
the work is encapsulated so that the main codebase (origin/master) is not disturbed

(2) process

(2.1) clone

branches are labels on the SHA-1 hashes of the individual commits

they follow the commits of the DAG

(2.2) checkout branch

git checkout -b new_branch

(2.3) commit changes

save changes to the file
stage by git add foo.bar
commit bt git commit -m "foobar changed"

(2.4) push branch

push the local branch to git push origin new_branch
you could also git push -u origin new_branch and start pushing with git push from that moment onwards as -u flag defines the branch as the default upstream branch

(2.5) pull request

Creating a pull request — GitHub Help
this is specific to the repo management tool
the pull requests mean the signal the work is done and you are requesting the master branch to pull it to itself (to merge)
this mechanism allows discussion and feedback and transparency

the opposite is to merge locally and push master with git push origin master

merge pull request after review 🠊 changes will be merged with master

(2.6) git fetch

locally, git is unaware of this situation

fetch all the changes and pull requests done remotely by git fetch

(2.7) git merge origin/master

merge the changes fetched from the origin/master into the local master
in effect, local repo’s master branch is identical to the remote origin

git pull does the same thing in the same way

(3) final note: fork vs branch

In git, branch is a lightweight thing that is often temporary and may be deleted. A fork (on GitHub) is a new project that is based on a previous project. You clone a repository to do work on it as a team member.
— https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/237506