A typical workflow with Git branching

A distributed version control system such as Git is designed for the complex and nonlinear workflows that are typical in interactive computing and exploratory research. A central concept is branching, which we will discuss in this recipe.

Getting ready

You need to work in a local Git repository for this recipe (see the previous recipe, Learning the basics of the distributed version control system Git).

How to do it...

1. We go to the myproject repository and we create a new branch named newidea:

   $ pwd
   /home/cyrille/git/cookbook-2nd/chapter02
   $ cd myproject
   $ git branch newidea
   $ git branch
   * master
     newidea
   

   As indicated by the star *, we are still on the master branch.

2. We switch to the newly-created newidea branch:

   $ git checkout newidea
   Switched to branch 'newidea'
   $ git branch
     Master
   * newidea
   

3. We make changes to the code, for instance, by creating a new file:

   $ echo "print('new')" > newfile.py
   $ cat newfile.py
   print('new')
   

4. We add this file to the staging...