YouTip

Introduction

Branching allows you to develop features, fix bugs, and experiment in isolation. Merging brings changes back together. This workflow is central to team collaboration.

Branch Operations

# List branches
git branch

# Create a new branch
git branch feature-login

# Switch to a branch
git checkout feature-login

# Create and switch (shortcut)
git checkout -b feature-login

# Modern alternative
git switch -c feature-login

# Delete a branch
git branch -d feature-login

Merging

# Switch to target branch
git checkout main

# Merge feature branch
git merge feature-login

# Merge with no fast-forward (preserves branch history)
git merge --no-ff feature-login

Handling Merge Conflicts

# When conflicts occur, edit the file manually
# Conflicts look like:
<<<<<<>>>>>> feature-branch

# After resolving:
git add resolved-file.txt
git commit -m "Resolve merge conflict"

Summary

Branching enables parallel development. Use checkout -b for new branches, merge to combine, and resolve conflicts manually when they arise.