Everything You Need To Know About Git Checkout -b
“Git checkout -b” is a command that you need to know when you’re learning to code. It’s actually very simple, and this blog will teach you everything you need to know.
What is "git checkout" ?
Git checkout is a terminal command that allows you to switch between and create git branches. By itself, it doesn't do anything. But prepended onto different commands, it can do a variety of different things.
This is what happens when I run git checkout by itself.
Nothing!
What does the "-b" in "git checkout -b" mean?
The "-b" is a flag that bundles two different commands together.
- Git branch <new\_branch\_name>
This creates a new branch named <new\_branch\_name>
- Git checkout <new\_branch\_name>
This switches you from your current branch to the new branch named <new\_branch\_name>
I went ahead and ran these commands on my local environment. Here is what the output looks like.
What happens when I run "git checkout -b" ?
Git checkout -b is a command that will create a new branch and switch you into that new branch from your current branch. I went ahead and ran the command in my local environment to show you what you should be seeing as your output. Here is what the output looks like.
As you can see, this command does exactly the same thing as the previous image, but it's a lot shorter, quicker to type, and easier to remember.
How do I use "git checkout -b" ?
One common use case is creating a new local git branch with git checkout -b, and then pushing it to a remote server to create a remote branch of the same name.
Here are the exact commands you need to run to do this.
Hope this helped!
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