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GIT-CHECKOUT(1) | Git Manual | GIT-CHECKOUT(1) |
NAME¶
git-checkout - Switch branches or restore working tree filesSYNOPSIS¶
git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [<branch>] git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] --detach [<branch>] git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [--detach] <commit> git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [[-b|-B|--orphan] <new_branch>] [<start_point>] git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>] [--] <paths>... git checkout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] [<paths>...]
DESCRIPTION¶
Updates files in the working tree to match the version in the index or the specified tree. If no paths are given, git checkout will also update HEAD to set the specified branch as the current branch. git checkout <branch>To prepare for working on <branch>, switch to it by
updating the index and the files in the working tree, and by pointing HEAD at
the branch. Local modifications to the files in the working tree are kept, so
that they can be committed to the <branch>.
If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in exactly
one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name, treat as equivalent
to
You could omit <branch>, in which case the command degenerates to
"check out the current branch", which is a glorified no-op with a
rather expensive side-effects to show only the tracking information, if
exists, for the current branch.
git checkout -b|-B <new_branch> [<start point>]
$ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>
Specifying -b causes a new branch to be created as
if git-branch(1) were called and then checked out. In this case you can
use the --track or --no-track options, which will be passed to
git branch. As a convenience, --track without -b implies
branch creation; see the description of --track below.
If -B is given, <new_branch> is created if it doesn’t exist;
otherwise, it is reset. This is the transactional equivalent of
that is to say, the branch is not reset/created unless "git checkout"
is successful.
git checkout --detach [<branch>], git checkout [--detach]
<commit>
$ git branch -f <branch> [<start point>] $ git checkout <branch>
Prepare to work on top of <commit>, by detaching
HEAD at it (see "DETACHED HEAD" section), and updating the index and
the files in the working tree. Local modifications to the files in the working
tree are kept, so that the resulting working tree will be the state recorded
in the commit plus the local modifications.
When the <commit> argument is a branch name, the --detach option
can be used to detach HEAD at the tip of the branch ( git checkout
<branch> would check out that branch without detaching HEAD).
Omitting <branch> detaches HEAD at the tip of the current branch.
git checkout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>...
When <paths> or --patch are given, git
checkout does not switch branches. It updates the named paths in
the working tree from the index file or from a named <tree-ish> (most
often a commit). In this case, the -b and --track options are
meaningless and giving either of them results in an error. The
<tree-ish> argument can be used to specify a specific tree-ish (i.e.
commit, tag or tree) to update the index for the given paths before updating
the working tree.
git checkout with <paths> or --patch is used to restore
modified or deleted paths to their original contents from the index or replace
paths with the contents from a named <tree-ish> (most often a
commit-ish).
The index may contain unmerged entries because of a previous failed merge. By
default, if you try to check out such an entry from the index, the checkout
operation will fail and nothing will be checked out. Using -f will
ignore these unmerged entries. The contents from a specific side of the merge
can be checked out of the index by using --ours or --theirs.
With -m, changes made to the working tree file can be discarded to
re-create the original conflicted merge result.
OPTIONS¶
-q, --quietQuiet, suppress feedback messages.
--[no-]progress
Progress status is reported on the standard error stream
by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless --quiet is
specified. This flag enables progress reporting even if not attached to a
terminal, regardless of --quiet.
-f, --force
When switching branches, proceed even if the index or the
working tree differs from HEAD. This is used to throw away local changes.
When checking out paths from the index, do not fail upon unmerged entries;
instead, unmerged entries are ignored.
--ours, --theirs
When checking out paths from the index, check out stage
#2 ( ours) or #3 (theirs) for unmerged paths.
Note that during git rebase and git pull --rebase, ours and
theirs may appear swapped; --ours gives the version from the
branch the changes are rebased onto, while --theirs gives the version
from the branch that holds your work that is being rebased.
This is because rebase is used in a workflow that treats the history at
the remote as the shared canonical one, and treats the work done on the branch
you are rebasing as the third-party work to be integrated, and you are
temporarily assuming the role of the keeper of the canonical history during
the rebase. As the keeper of the canonical history, you need to view the
history from the remote as ours (i.e. "our shared canonical
history"), while what you did on your side branch as theirs (i.e.
"one contributor’s work on top of it").
-b <new_branch>
Create a new branch named <new_branch> and start it
at <start_point>; see git-branch(1) for details.
-B <new_branch>
Creates the branch <new_branch> and start it at
<start_point>; if it already exists, then reset it to
<start_point>. This is equivalent to running "git branch" with
"-f"; see git-branch(1) for details.
-t, --track
When creating a new branch, set up "upstream"
configuration. See "--track" in git-branch(1) for details.
If no -b option is given, the name of the new branch will be derived from
the remote-tracking branch, by looking at the local part of the refspec
configured for the corresponding remote, and then stripping the initial part
up to the "*". This would tell us to use "hack" as the
local branch when branching off of "origin/hack" (or
"remotes/origin/hack", or even
"refs/remotes/origin/hack"). If the given name has no slash, or the
above guessing results in an empty name, the guessing is aborted. You can
explicitly give a name with -b in such a case.
--no-track
Do not set up "upstream" configuration, even if
the branch.autoSetupMerge configuration variable is true.
-l
Create the new branch’s reflog; see
git-branch(1) for details.
--detach
Rather than checking out a branch to work on it, check
out a commit for inspection and discardable experiments. This is the default
behavior of "git checkout <commit>" when <commit> is not
a branch name. See the "DETACHED HEAD" section below for
details.
--orphan <new_branch>
Create a new orphan branch, named
<new_branch>, started from <start_point> and switch to it. The
first commit made on this new branch will have no parents and it will be the
root of a new history totally disconnected from all the other branches and
commits.
The index and the working tree are adjusted as if you had previously run
"git checkout <start_point>". This allows you to start a new
history that records a set of paths similar to <start_point> by easily
running "git commit -a" to make the root commit.
This can be useful when you want to publish the tree from a commit without
exposing its full history. You might want to do this to publish an open source
branch of a project whose current tree is "clean", but whose full
history contains proprietary or otherwise encumbered bits of code.
If you want to start a disconnected history that records a set of paths that is
totally different from the one of <start_point>, then you should clear
the index and the working tree right after creating the orphan branch by
running "git rm -rf ." from the top level of the working tree.
Afterwards you will be ready to prepare your new files, repopulating the
working tree, by copying them from elsewhere, extracting a tarball, etc.
--ignore-skip-worktree-bits
In sparse checkout mode, git checkout --
<paths> would update only entries matched by <paths> and
sparse patterns in $GIT_DIR/info/sparse-checkout. This option ignores the
sparse patterns and adds back any files in <paths>.
-m, --merge
When switching branches, if you have local modifications
to one or more files that are different between the current branch and the
branch to which you are switching, the command refuses to switch branches in
order to preserve your modifications in context. However, with this option, a
three-way merge between the current branch, your working tree contents, and
the new branch is done, and you will be on the new branch.
When a merge conflict happens, the index entries for conflicting paths are left
unmerged, and you need to resolve the conflicts and mark the resolved paths
with git add (or git rm if the merge should result in deletion
of the path).
When checking out paths from the index, this option lets you recreate the
conflicted merge in the specified paths.
--conflict=<style>
The same as --merge option above, but changes the way the
conflicting hunks are presented, overriding the merge.conflictStyle
configuration variable. Possible values are "merge" (default) and
"diff3" (in addition to what is shown by "merge" style,
shows the original contents).
-p, --patch
Interactively select hunks in the difference between the
<tree-ish> (or the index, if unspecified) and the working tree. The
chosen hunks are then applied in reverse to the working tree (and if a
<tree-ish> was specified, the index).
This means that you can use git checkout -p to selectively discard edits
from your current working tree. See the “Interactive Mode”
section of git-add(1) to learn how to operate the --patch
mode.
--ignore-other-worktrees
git checkout refuses when the wanted ref is
already checked out by another worktree. This option makes it check the ref
out anyway. In other words, the ref can be held by more than one
worktree.
<branch>
Branch to checkout; if it refers to a branch (i.e., a
name that, when prepended with "refs/heads/", is a valid ref), then
that branch is checked out. Otherwise, if it refers to a valid commit, your
HEAD becomes "detached" and you are no longer on any branch (see
below for details).
As a special case, the "@{-N}" syntax for the N-th last
branch/commit checks out branches (instead of detaching). You may also specify
- which is synonymous with "@{-1}".
As a further special case, you may use "A...B" as a shortcut
for the merge base of A and B if there is exactly one merge
base. You can leave out at most one of A and B, in which case it
defaults to HEAD.
<new_branch>
Name for the new branch.
<start_point>
The name of a commit at which to start the new branch;
see git-branch(1) for details. Defaults to HEAD.
<tree-ish>
Tree to checkout from (when paths are given). If not
specified, the index will be used.
DETACHED HEAD¶
HEAD normally refers to a named branch (e.g. master). Meanwhile, each branch refers to a specific commit. Let’s look at a repo with three commits, one of them tagged, and with branch master checked out:HEAD (refers to branch 'master') | v a---b---c branch 'master' (refers to commit 'c') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
$ edit; git add; git commit HEAD (refers to branch 'master') | v a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
$ git checkout v2.0 # or $ git checkout master^^ HEAD (refers to commit 'b') | v a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
$ edit; git add; git commit HEAD (refers to commit 'e') | v e / a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
$ edit; git add; git commit HEAD (refers to commit 'f') | v e---f / a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
$ git checkout master HEAD (refers to branch 'master') e---f | / v a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
$ git checkout -b foo (1) $ git branch foo (2) $ git tag foo (3)
$ git reflog -2 HEAD # or $ git log -g -2 HEAD
ARGUMENT DISAMBIGUATION¶
When there is only one argument given and it is not -- (e.g. "git checkout abc"), and when the argument is both a valid <tree-ish> (e.g. a branch "abc" exists) and a valid <pathspec> (e.g. a file or a directory whose name is "abc" exists), Git would usually ask you to disambiguate. Because checking out a branch is so common an operation, however, "git checkout abc" takes "abc" as a <tree-ish> in such a situation. Use git checkout -- <pathspec> if you want to checkout these paths out of the index.EXAMPLES¶
1.The following sequence checks out the master
branch, reverts the Makefile to two revisions back, deletes hello.c by
mistake, and gets it back from the index.
1. switch branch
2. take a file out of another commit
3. restore hello.c from the index
If you want to check out all C source files out of the index, you can say
Note the quotes around *.c. The file hello.c will also be checked
out, even though it is no longer in the working tree, because the file
globbing is used to match entries in the index (not in the working tree by the
shell).
If you have an unfortunate branch that is named hello.c, this step would
be confused as an instruction to switch to that branch. You should instead
write:
$ git checkout master (1) $ git checkout master~2 Makefile (2) $ rm -f hello.c $ git checkout hello.c (3)
$ git checkout -- '*.c'
$ git checkout -- hello.c
2.After working in the wrong branch, switching to the
correct branch would be done using:
However, your "wrong" branch and correct "mytopic" branch
may differ in files that you have modified locally, in which case the above
checkout would fail like this:
You can give the -m flag to the command, which would try a three-way
merge:
After this three-way merge, the local modifications are not registered in
your index file, so git diff would show you what changes you made since
the tip of the new branch.
$ git checkout mytopic
$ git checkout mytopic error: You have local changes to 'frotz'; not switching branches.
$ git checkout -m mytopic Auto-merging frotz
3.When a merge conflict happens during switching
branches with the -m option, you would see something like this:
At this point, git diff shows the changes cleanly merged as in the
previous example, as well as the changes in the conflicted files. Edit and
resolve the conflict and mark it resolved with git add as usual:
$ git checkout -m mytopic Auto-merging frotz ERROR: Merge conflict in frotz fatal: merge program failed
$ edit frotz $ git add frotz
GIT¶
Part of the git(1) suite05/15/2017 | Git 2.11.0 |