GIT-CHECKOUT(1)                                                GIT-CHECKOUT(1)



NAME
       git-checkout - Checkout a branch or paths to the working tree

SYNOPSIS
       git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [<branch>]
       git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [--detach] [<commit>]
       git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [[-b|-B|--orphan] <new_branch>] [<start_point>]
       git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>] [--] <paths>...
       git checkout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] [<paths>...]





DESCRIPTION
       Updates files in the working tree to match the version in the index or
       the specified tree. If no paths are given, git checkout will also
       update HEAD to set the specified branch as the current branch.


       git checkout [<branch>], git checkout -b|-B <new_branch> [<start
       point>], git checkout [--detach] [<commit>]
              This form switches branches by updating the index, working tree,
              and HEAD to reflect the specified branch or commit.

              If -b is given, a new branch is created as if git-branch(1) were
              called and then checked out; in this case you can use the
              --track or --no-track options, which will be passed to git
              branch. As a convenience, --track without -b implies branch
              creation; see the description of --track below.

              If -B is given, <new_branch> is created if it doesn&#8217;t
              exist; otherwise, it is reset. This is the transactional
              equivalent of


              $ git branch -f <branch> [<start point>]
              $ git checkout <branch>


              that is to say, the branch is not reset/created unless "git
              checkout" is successful.


       git checkout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>...
              When <paths> or --patch are given, git checkout does not switch
              branches. It updates the named paths in the working tree from
              the index file or from a named <tree-ish> (most often a commit).
              In this case, the -b and --track options are meaningless and
              giving either of them results in an error. The <tree-ish>
              argument can be used to specify a specific tree-ish (i.e.
              commit, tag or tree) to update the index for the given paths
              before updating the working tree.

              The index may contain unmerged entries because of a previous
              failed merge. By default, if you try to check out such an entry
              from the index, the checkout operation will fail and nothing
              will be checked out. Using -f will ignore these unmerged
              entries. The contents from a specific side of the merge can be
              checked out of the index by using --ours or --theirs. With -m,
              changes made to the working tree file can be discarded to
              re-create the original conflicted merge result.


OPTIONS
       -q, --quiet
              Quiet, suppress feedback messages.


       -f, --force
              When switching branches, proceed even if the index or the
              working tree differs from HEAD. This is used to throw away local
              changes.

              When checking out paths from the index, do not fail upon
              unmerged entries; instead, unmerged entries are ignored.


       --ours, --theirs
              When checking out paths from the index, check out stage #2
              (ours) or #3 (theirs) for unmerged paths.


       -b     Create a new branch named <new_branch> and start it at
              <start_point>; see git-branch(1) for details.


       -B     Creates the branch <new_branch> and start it at <start_point>;
              if it already exists, then reset it to <start_point>. This is
              equivalent to running "git branch" with "-f"; see git-branch(1)
              for details.


       -t, --track
              When creating a new branch, set up "upstream" configuration. See
              "--track" in git-branch(1) for details.

              If no -b option is given, the name of the new branch will be
              derived from the remote-tracking branch. If "remotes/" or
              "refs/remotes/" is prefixed it is stripped away, and then the
              part up to the next slash (which would be the nickname of the
              remote) is removed. This would tell us to use "hack" as the
              local branch when branching off of "origin/hack" (or
              "remotes/origin/hack", or even "refs/remotes/origin/hack"). If
              the given name has no slash, or the above guessing results in an
              empty name, the guessing is aborted. You can explicitly give a
              name with -b in such a case.


       --no-track
              Do not set up "upstream" configuration, even if the
              branch.autosetupmerge configuration variable is true.


       -l     Create the new branch&#8217;s reflog; see git-branch(1) for
              details.


       --detach
              Rather than checking out a branch to work on it, check out a
              commit for inspection and discardable experiments. This is the
              default behavior of "git checkout <commit>" when <commit> is not
              a branch name. See the "DETACHED HEAD" section below for
              details.


       --orphan
              Create a new orphan branch, named <new_branch>, started from
              <start_point> and switch to it. The first commit made on this
              new branch will have no parents and it will be the root of a new
              history totally disconnected from all the other branches and
              commits.

              The index and the working tree are adjusted as if you had
              previously run "git checkout <start_point>". This allows you to
              start a new history that records a set of paths similar to
              <start_point> by easily running "git commit -a" to make the root
              commit.

              This can be useful when you want to publish the tree from a
              commit without exposing its full history. You might want to do
              this to publish an open source branch of a project whose current
              tree is "clean", but whose full history contains proprietary or
              otherwise encumbered bits of code.

              If you want to start a disconnected history that records a set
              of paths that is totally different from the one of
              <start_point>, then you should clear the index and the working
              tree right after creating the orphan branch by running "git rm
              -rf ." from the top level of the working tree. Afterwards you
              will be ready to prepare your new files, repopulating the
              working tree, by copying them from elsewhere, extracting a
              tarball, etc.


       -m, --merge
              When switching branches, if you have local modifications to one
              or more files that are different between the current branch and
              the branch to which you are switching, the command refuses to
              switch branches in order to preserve your modifications in
              context. However, with this option, a three-way merge between
              the current branch, your working tree contents, and the new
              branch is done, and you will be on the new branch.

              When a merge conflict happens, the index entries for conflicting
              paths are left unmerged, and you need to resolve the conflicts
              and mark the resolved paths with git add (or git rm if the merge
              should result in deletion of the path).

              When checking out paths from the index, this option lets you
              recreate the conflicted merge in the specified paths.


       --conflict=<style>
              The same as --merge option above, but changes the way the
              conflicting hunks are presented, overriding the
              merge.conflictstyle configuration variable. Possible values are
              "merge" (default) and "diff3" (in addition to what is shown by
              "merge" style, shows the original contents).


       -p, --patch
              Interactively select hunks in the difference between the
              <tree-ish> (or the index, if unspecified) and the working tree.
              The chosen hunks are then applied in reverse to the working tree
              (and if a <tree-ish> was specified, the index).

              This means that you can use git checkout -p to selectively
              discard edits from your current working tree. See the
              &#8220;Interactive Mode&#8221; section of git-add(1) to learn
              how to operate the --patch mode.


       <branch>
              Branch to checkout; if it refers to a branch (i.e., a name that,
              when prepended with "refs/heads/", is a valid ref), then that
              branch is checked out. Otherwise, if it refers to a valid
              commit, your HEAD becomes "detached" and you are no longer on
              any branch (see below for details).

              As a special case, the "@{-N}" syntax for the N-th last branch
              checks out the branch (instead of detaching). You may also
              specify - which is synonymous with "@{-1}".

              As a further special case, you may use "A...B" as a shortcut for
              the merge base of A and B if there is exactly one merge base.
              You can leave out at most one of A and B, in which case it
              defaults to HEAD.


       <new_branch>
              Name for the new branch.


       <start_point>
              The name of a commit at which to start the new branch; see
              git-branch(1) for details. Defaults to HEAD.


       <tree-ish>
              Tree to checkout from (when paths are given). If not specified,
              the index will be used.


DETACHED HEAD
       HEAD normally refers to a named branch (e.g. master). Meanwhile, each
       branch refers to a specific commit. Let&#8217;s look at a repo with
       three commits, one of them tagged, and with branch master checked out:

                  HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
                   |
                   v
       a---b---c  branch 'master' (refers to commit 'c')
           ^
           |
         tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')





       When a commit is created in this state, the branch is updated to refer
       to the new commit. Specifically, git commit creates a new commit d,
       whose parent is commit c, and then updates branch master to refer to
       new commit d. HEAD still refers to branch master and so indirectly now
       refers to commit d:

       $ edit; git add; git commit

                      HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
                       |
                       v
       a---b---c---d  branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
           ^
           |
         tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')





       It is sometimes useful to be able to checkout a commit that is not at
       the tip of any named branch, or even to create a new commit that is not
       referenced by a named branch. Let&#8217;s look at what happens when we
       checkout commit b (here we show two ways this may be done):

       $ git checkout v2.0  # or
       $ git checkout master^^

          HEAD (refers to commit 'b')
           |
           v
       a---b---c---d  branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
           ^
           |
         tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')





       Notice that regardless of which checkout command we use, HEAD now
       refers directly to commit b. This is known as being in detached HEAD
       state. It means simply that HEAD refers to a specific commit, as
       opposed to referring to a named branch. Let&#8217;s see what happens
       when we create a commit:

       $ edit; git add; git commit

            HEAD (refers to commit 'e')
             |
             v
             e
            /
       a---b---c---d  branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
           ^
           |
         tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')





       There is now a new commit e, but it is referenced only by HEAD. We can
       of course add yet another commit in this state:

       $ edit; git add; git commit

                HEAD (refers to commit 'f')
                 |
                 v
             e---f
            /
       a---b---c---d  branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
           ^
           |
         tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')





       In fact, we can perform all the normal git operations. But, let&#8217;s
       look at what happens when we then checkout master:

       $ git checkout master

                      HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
             e---f     |
            /          v
       a---b---c---d  branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
           ^
           |
         tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')





       It is important to realize that at this point nothing refers to commit
       f. Eventually commit f (and by extension commit e) will be deleted by
       the routine git garbage collection process, unless we create a
       reference before that happens. If we have not yet moved away from
       commit f, any of these will create a reference to it:

       $ git checkout -b foo   (1)
       $ git branch foo        (2)
       $ git tag foo           (3)




       1.

       creates a new branch foo, which refers to commit f, and then updates
       HEAD to refer to branch foo. In other words, we&#8217;ll no longer be
       in detached HEAD state after this command.
       2.

       similarly creates a new branch foo, which refers to commit f, but
       leaves HEAD detached.
       3.

       creates a new tag foo, which refers to commit f, leaving HEAD detached.



       If we have moved away from commit f, then we must first recover its
       object name (typically by using git reflog), and then we can create a
       reference to it. For example, to see the last two commits to which HEAD
       referred, we can use either of these commands:

       $ git reflog -2 HEAD # or
       $ git log -g -2 HEAD





EXAMPLES
       1. The following sequence checks out the master branch, reverts the
          Makefile to two revisions back, deletes hello.c by mistake, and gets
          it back from the index.


          $ git checkout master             (1)
          $ git checkout master~2 Makefile  (2)
          $ rm -f hello.c
          $ git checkout hello.c            (3)


          1. switch branch
          2. take a file out of another commit
          3. restore hello.c from the index

          If you have an unfortunate branch that is named hello.c, this step
          would be confused as an instruction to switch to that branch. You
          should instead write:


          $ git checkout -- hello.c



       2. After working in the wrong branch, switching to the correct branch
          would be done using:


          $ git checkout mytopic


          However, your "wrong" branch and correct "mytopic" branch may differ
          in files that you have modified locally, in which case the above
          checkout would fail like this:


          $ git checkout mytopic
          error: You have local changes to 'frotz'; not switching branches.


          You can give the -m flag to the command, which would try a three-way
          merge:


          $ git checkout -m mytopic
          Auto-merging frotz


          After this three-way merge, the local modifications are not
          registered in your index file, so git diff would show you what
          changes you made since the tip of the new branch.

       3. When a merge conflict happens during switching branches with the -m
          option, you would see something like this:


          $ git checkout -m mytopic
          Auto-merging frotz
          ERROR: Merge conflict in frotz
          fatal: merge program failed


          At this point, git diff shows the changes cleanly merged as in the
          previous example, as well as the changes in the conflicted files.
          Edit and resolve the conflict and mark it resolved with git add as
          usual:


          $ edit frotz
          $ git add frotz


GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite




                                                               GIT-CHECKOUT(1)
