1git-checkout(1) 2=============== 3 4NAME 5---- 6git-checkout - Checkout and switch to a branch. 7 8SYNOPSIS 9-------- 10'git-checkout' [-f] [-b <new_branch>] [-m] [<branch>] [<paths>...] 11 12DESCRIPTION 13----------- 14 15When <paths> are not given, this command switches branches, by 16updating the index and working tree to reflect the specified 17branch, <branch>, and updating HEAD to be <branch> or, if 18specified, <new_branch>. 19 20When <paths> are given, this command does *not* switch 21branches. It updates the named paths in the working tree from 22the index file (i.e. it runs `git-checkout-index -f -u`). In 23this case, `-f` and `-b` options are meaningless and giving 24either of them results in an error. <branch> argument can be 25used to specify a specific tree-ish to update the index for the 26given paths before updating the working tree. 27 28 29OPTIONS 30------- 31-f:: 32 Force an re-read of everything. 33 34-b:: 35 Create a new branch and start it at <branch>. 36 37-m:: 38 If you have local modifications to a file that is 39 different between the current branch and the branch you 40 are switching to, the command refuses to switch 41 branches, to preserve your modifications in context. 42 With this option, a three-way merge between the current 43 branch, your working tree contents, and the new branch 44 is done, and you will be on the new branch. 45+ 46When a merge conflict happens, the index entries for conflicting 47paths are left unmerged, and you need to resolve the conflicts 48and mark the resolved paths with `git update-index`. 49 50<new_branch>:: 51 Name for the new branch. 52 53<branch>:: 54 Branch to checkout; may be any object ID that resolves to a 55 commit. Defaults to HEAD. 56 57 58EXAMPLES 59-------- 60 61. The following sequence checks out the `master` branch, reverts 62the `Makefile` to two revisions back, deletes hello.c by 63mistake, and gets it back from the index. 64+ 65------------ 66$ git checkout master <1> 67$ git checkout master~2 Makefile <2> 68$ rm -f hello.c 69$ git checkout hello.c <3> 70 71<1> switch branch 72<2> take out a file out of other commit 73<3> or "git checkout -- hello.c", as in the next example. 74------------ 75+ 76If you have an unfortunate branch that is named `hello.c`, the 77last step above would be confused as an instruction to switch to 78that branch. You should instead write: 79+ 80------------ 81$ git checkout -- hello.c 82------------ 83 84. After working in a wrong branch, switching to the correct 85branch you would want to is done with: 86+ 87------------ 88$ git checkout mytopic 89------------ 90+ 91However, your "wrong" branch and correct "mytopic" branch may 92differ in files that you have locally modified, in which case, 93the above checkout would fail like this: 94+ 95------------ 96$ git checkout mytopic 97fatal: Entry 'frotz' not uptodate. Cannot merge. 98------------ 99+ 100You can give the `-m` flag to the command, which would try a 101three-way merge: 102+ 103------------ 104$ git checkout -m mytopic 105Auto-merging frotz 106------------ 107+ 108After this three-way merge, the local modifications are _not_ 109registered in your index file, so `git diff` would show you what 110changes you made since the tip of the new branch. 111 112. When a merge conflict happens during switching branches with 113the `-m` option, you would see something like this: 114+ 115------------ 116$ git checkout -m mytopic 117Auto-merging frotz 118merge: warning: conflicts during merge 119ERROR: Merge conflict in frotz 120fatal: merge program failed 121------------ 122+ 123At this point, `git diff` shows the changes cleanly merged as in 124the previous example, as well as the changes in the conflicted 125files. Edit and resolve the conflict and mark it resolved with 126`git update-index` as usual: 127+ 128------------ 129$ edit frotz 130$ git update-index frotz 131------------ 132 133 134Author 135------ 136Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> 137 138Documentation 139-------------- 140Documentation by Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 141 142GIT 143--- 144Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite 145