git branch

Creating a new branch

Note: A newly created branch won’t be switched to automatically.

From the current branch

By only providing a name, git branch will use your current branch as the starting point when creating a new branch.

$ git branch <name>

From a specific starting point

If you want the new branch to use an existing branch or tag as its starting point you can pass it in as a second argument.

$ git branch <name> <branch|tag>

Example

You’re currently on the bugfix branch, however you want to create a new feature branch using master as the starting point.

Rather than running the following:

$ git checkout master
$ git branch feature

You can simply run the following instead:

$ git branch feature master

Deleting an existing branch

Note: Using these commands will only delete the branch in your local copy of the repository. Learn how to delete a remote Git branch.

Safely using the -d flag

The branch will only be deleted if either:

• The branch has been fully merged with its corresponding remote branch.
• In HEAD if no remote branch has been set.

$ git branch -d <branch>

Unsafely using the -D flag

$ git branch -D <branch>