Git - git-checkout Documentation
source link: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-checkout
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
git-checkout - Switch branches or restore working tree files
SYNOPSIS
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>] [--] <pathspec>… git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>] --pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul] git checkout (-p|--patch) [<tree-ish>] [--] [<pathspec>…]
DESCRIPTION
Updates files in the working tree to match the version in the index
or the specified tree. If no pathspec was 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 and
--no-guess
is not specified, treat as equivalent to
$ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>
You could omit <branch>
, in which case the command degenerates to
"check out the current branch", which is a glorified no-op with
rather expensive side-effects to show only the tracking information,
if exists, for the current branch.
git checkout -b|-B <new_branch> [<start point>]
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
$ git branch -f <branch> [<start point>] $ git checkout <branch>
that is to say, the branch is not reset/created unless "git checkout" is successful.
git checkout --detach [<branch>] git checkout [--detach] <commit>
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 [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>… git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>] --pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul]
Overwrite the contents of the files that match the pathspec.
When the <tree-ish>
(most often a commit) is not given,
overwrite working tree with the contents in the index.
When the <tree-ish>
is given, overwrite both the index and
the working tree with the contents at the <tree-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.
git checkout (-p|--patch) [<tree-ish>] [--] [<pathspec>…]
This is similar to the previous mode, but lets you use the
interactive interface to show the "diff" output and choose which
hunks to use in the result. See below for the description of
--patch
option.
OPTIONS
-q --quiet
Quiet, suppress feedback messages.
--progress --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.
--guess --no-guess
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
$ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>
If the branch exists in multiple remotes and one of them is named by
the checkout.defaultRemote
configuration variable, we’ll use that
one for the purposes of disambiguation, even if the <branch>
isn’t
unique across all remotes. Set it to
e.g. checkout.defaultRemote=origin
to always checkout remote
branches from there if <branch>
is ambiguous but exists on the
origin remote. See also checkout.defaultRemote
in
git-config[1].
--guess
is the default behavior. Use --no-guess
to disable it.
The default behavior can be set via the checkout.guess
configuration
variable.
-l
Create the new branch’s reflog; see git-branch[1] for details.
-d --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.
When switching branches with --merge
, staged changes may be lost.
--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.
Note that this option uses the no overlay mode by default (see also
--overlay
), and currently doesn’t support overlay 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.
--overwrite-ignore --no-overwrite-ignore
Silently overwrite ignored files when switching branches. This
is the default behavior. Use --no-overwrite-ignore
to abort
the operation when the new branch contains ignored files.
--recurse-submodules --no-recurse-submodules
Using --recurse-submodules
will update the content of all active
submodules according to the commit recorded in the superproject. If
local modifications in a submodule would be overwritten the checkout
will fail unless -f
is used. If nothing (or --no-recurse-submodules
)
is used, submodules working trees will not be updated.
Just like git-submodule[1], this will detach HEAD
of the
submodule.
--overlay --no-overlay
In the default overlay mode, git checkout
never
removes files from the index or the working tree. When
specifying --no-overlay
, files that appear in the index and
working tree, but not in <tree-ish>
are removed, to make them
match <tree-ish>
exactly.
--pathspec-from-file=<file>
Pathspec is passed in <file>
instead of commandline args. If
<file>
is exactly -
then standard input is used. Pathspec
elements are separated by LF or CR/LF. Pathspec elements can be
quoted as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath
(see git-config[1]). See also --pathspec-file-nul
and
global --literal-pathspecs
.
--pathspec-file-nul
Only meaningful with --pathspec-from-file
. Pathspec elements are
separated with NUL character and all other characters are taken
literally (including newlines and quotes).
<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).
You can use the @{-N}
syntax to refer to the N-th last
branch/commit checked out using "git checkout" operation. You may
also specify -
which is synonymous to @{-1}
.
As a 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
.
As a 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
.
<tree-ish>
Tree to checkout from (when paths are given). If not specified, the index will be used.
As a 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
.
--
Do not interpret any more arguments as options.
<pathspec>…
Limits the paths affected by the operation.
For more details, see the pathspec entry in gitglossary[7].
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')
When a commit is created in this state, the branch is updated to refer to
the new commit. Specifically, git commit creates a new commit d
, whose
parent is commit c
, and then updates branch master
to refer to new
commit d
. HEAD
still refers to branch master
and so indirectly now refers
to commit d
:
$ 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')
It is sometimes useful to be able to checkout a commit that is not at
the tip of any named branch, or even to create a new commit that is not
referenced by a named branch. Let’s look at what happens when we
checkout commit b
(here we show two ways this may be done):
$ 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')
Notice that regardless of which checkout command we use, HEAD
now refers
directly to commit b
. This is known as being in detached HEAD
state.
It means simply that HEAD
refers to a specific commit, as opposed to
referring to a named branch. Let’s see what happens when we create a commit:
$ 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')
There is now a new commit e
, but it is referenced only by HEAD
. We can
of course add yet another commit in this state:
$ 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')
In fact, we can perform all the normal Git operations. But, let’s look
at what happens when we then checkout master
:
$ 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')
It is important to realize that at this point nothing refers to commit
f
. Eventually commit f
(and by extension commit e
) will be deleted
by the routine Git garbage collection process, unless we create a reference
before that happens. If we have not yet moved away from commit f
,
any of these will create a reference to it:
$ git checkout -b foo (1) $ git branch foo (2) $ git tag foo (3)
-
creates a new branch
foo
, which refers to commitf
, and then updatesHEAD
to refer to branchfoo
. In other words, we’ll no longer be in detachedHEAD
state after this command. -
similarly creates a new branch
foo
, which refers to commitf
, but leavesHEAD
detached. -
creates a new tag
foo
, which refers to commitf
, leavingHEAD
detached.
If we have moved away from commit f
, then we must first recover its object
name (typically by using git reflog), and then we can create a reference to
it. For example, to see the last two commits to which HEAD
referred, we
can use either of these commands:
$ 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
-
The following sequence checks out the
master
branch, reverts theMakefile
to two revisions back, deleteshello.c
by mistake, and gets it back from the index.$ git checkout master (1) $ git checkout master~2 Makefile (2) $ rm -f hello.c $ git checkout hello.c (3)
-
switch branch
-
take a file out of another commit
-
restore
hello.c
from the index
If you want to check out all C source files out of the index, you can say
$ git checkout -- '*.c'
Note the quotes around
*.c
. The filehello.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 -- hello.c
-
-
After working in the wrong branch, switching to the correct branch would be done using:
$ git checkout mytopic
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:$ git checkout mytopic error: You have local changes to 'frotz'; not switching branches.
You can give the
-m
flag to the command, which would try a three-way merge:$ git checkout -m mytopic Auto-merging frotz
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. -
When a merge conflict happens during switching branches with the
-m
option, you would see something like this:$ git checkout -m mytopic Auto-merging frotz ERROR: Merge conflict in frotz fatal: merge program failed
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 withgit add
as usual:$ edit frotz $ git add frotz
Part of the git[1] suite
Recommend
About Joyk
Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK