Branches

Session 04

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 default branch.
2. 🚀 Optional: You created and resolved a merge conflict.

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

Exercises

Branches

1. If needed, navigate to the recipes repository using the command line.
2. Create a new branch called feature.
3. Switch to the new branch.
4. Add a new recipe to your recipes.txt file.
5. Stage and commit the changes to the recipes.txt file on the feature branch.
6. View the contents of recipes.txt to verify your changes.
7. Switch back to the default branch (main or master).
8. View the contents of recipes.txt again to confirm that the previous changes do not exist on the default branch.
9. Merge the feature branch into your default branch.
10. Delete the feature branch.
11. View the contents of recipes.txt yet again to confirm that the previous changes have been merged into the default branch.

🚀 Bonus exercises

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 branches chapter.
2. Resolve the merge conflict.
3. Delete the merged branch afterwards.

Slides

How can I download the slides as a PDF file?

To export 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:

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

Cheatsheet

Command	Description
git branch	Lists / creates and deletes branches
git branch feature	Creates the feature branch
git branch -d feature	Deletes the feature branch
git switch	Switches between branches
git switch feature	Switches to the feature branch
git checkout	Switches between branches
git checkout -b feature	Creates and switches to the feature branch
git merge	Merges branches
git merge feature	Merges the feature branch into the current branch
git merge --abort	Aborts a merge
git merge --squash	Squaches commits on branch into a single commit and merge
git stash	Staches changes for later use
git stash -m "stashing message"	Stashes changes and includes a message
git stash list	Shows stored stashes
git stash apply	Applies the latest stash
git stash apply stash@{n}	Applies a specific stash
git stash pop	Applies the 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