Branches

Session 04

Starts at:

12:00

Slides Chapter: Branches Quiz

This session

In this session, you will work on the following tasks:

  1. Reading: Read the chapter “Branches” in the Version Control Book.
  2. Implementation: Try out the commands in the chapter.
  3. Exercises: Work on the exercises for the recipes project.
  4. Quiz: Test your knowledge with the quiz.

As always:

  1. Try out the commands of this session and play around with them.
  2. Check whether you have achieved the learning objectives.
  3. Ask questions!
  4. Let’s git started!

Learning objectives

💡 You understand the purpose and benefits of using branches in Git
💡 You can create and switch between branches
💡 You can merge branches and resolve merge conflicts
💡 You can name at least three best practices when working with branches

recipes project

At the end of this session, you should have accomplished the following:

  1. You created a new branch and merged changes to your main branch
  2. You created and resolved a merge conflict

Please keep the recipes folder! We will continue to use it in the following sessions.

Exercises

1. Create and merge a branch

  1. Create a new branch called feature.
  2. Switch to the new branch.
  3. Add a new recipe to your recipes.txt file.
  4. Stage and commit the changes to your recipes.txt file on the feature branch.
  5. Switch back to the default branch (main or master).
  6. Merge the feature branch with your default branch.
  7. Delete the feature branch.

2. Create and resolve a merge conflict

  1. Deliberately create a merge conflict by editing the same section of a file on two separate branches and attempting to merge them. An example can be found in the Version Control Book chapter.
  2. Resolve the merge conflict.
  3. Delete the feature branch afterwards.

Slides

To print the slides to PDF, do the following:

  1. Toggle into Print View using the E key (or using the Navigation Menu).
  2. Open the in-browser print dialog (CTRL/CMD+P).
  3. Change the Destination setting to Save as PDF.
  4. Change the Layout to Landscape.
  5. Change the Margins to None.
  6. Enable the Background graphics option.
  7. Click Save.

Note: This feature has been confirmed to work in Google Chrome, Chromium as well as in Firefox.

Here’s what the Chrome print dialog would look like with these settings enabled:

Screenshot of Chrome print dialog with the first slide/page of 43 shown on the left, and print options on the right. The Destination print option has Save as PDF selected.

These instructions were copied from the Quarto documentation (MIT License) and slightly modified.

Cheatsheet

Command Description
git branch Lists / creates and deletes branches
git switch Switches between branches
git checkout Switches between branches
git merge Merges branches
git merge --abort Aborts a merge
git merge --squash Squaches commits on branch into a single commit and merge
git branch -d feature Deletes the feature branch
git stash Stores made changes for later use
git stash -m "stashing message" Stashes your changes and includes a message
git stash list Shows all of your stored stashes
git stash apply Applies your latest stash
git stash apply stash@{n} Applies a specific stash
git stash pop Applies your latest stash and removes it from stash list
git stash pop stash@{n} Applies a specific stash and removes it from stash list
git cherry-pick <commithash> Applies changes from <commithash>
git rebase Different way of integrating changes from two branches