Question

I am tryin gto understand branches in git.I have worked with SVN so trying to get the directory structures

i create a git main repo with

mkdir git_repo
cd git_repo
git init --bare
cd ../
git clone git_repo new_clone
cd new_clone
touch test.txt
git add test.txt
git commit test.txt
git push origin master
//So now the contents are in git_repo
git branch new_branch
git branch 
/*master
*new_branch is the output */
git checkout new_branch
//Switched to branch 'new'

My question is that

1.How to switch back to new_clone

2.how to push files to new_repo from the branch

3.How can i see the diff in files beteen the new_branch and new_clone

4.How can i push the files to git_repo

5.When i do use merge in this case

6.How to list the files in new_branch and new_clone separately

Can any one please explain these with the examples.

Thanks..

Answer 1

1. You cannot “switch back to new_clone“, because new_clone is not a branch. You have a repository with two branches, named master and new_branch. What does “switch to [repository path]” mean?
2. I think what you mean to ask here is “how do I retrieve commits made to git_repo into my working copy in new_clone?” The answer is you do a git fetch to retrieve the changes, and git merge or git rebase to incorporate them locally (or git pull to do both in one operation).
3. git diff new_branch new_clone. For a particular file, git diff new_branch:path/to/file new_clone:path/to/file. For the diff in terms of changesets, not patch format, use git log --oneline --left-right new_clone...new_branch or the like.
4. git push, as you already did.
5. Use merge when you want to incorporate one branch’s changes and history into another branch. Merging is a very powerful concept, but you should already be familiar with the basic idea from SVN – git tends to work better, though, because it takes better account of shared ancestry between the revisions to be merged even in a 2-way.