Git feature branch & merge

Start with your main branch

git checkout main
git fetch origin

If your local main has been modified, you can reset its state.

git reset --hard origin/main

Checkout a new feature branch.

git checkout -b my-feature

Make changes in this branch, committing as usual.

git add file.txt
git commit -m "add my file.txt"

You can push your branch to allow others and yourself to evaluate and commit further to it.

git push -u origin my-feature

"-u" is shorthand for "--set-upstream". Therefore "git push -u origin" tells git you want to push this new branch to the same origin as the rest of the repository, without this flag Git wouldn't know where to push to.

It’s time to test, review, get approval, etc. for your branch to be merged into main!

Now we merge my-feature into main:

git checkout main
git pull
git pull origin my-feature
git push

Here we checkout main, making sure to be at the latest revision with git pull. Next you pull in the changes from the my-feature branch, git pull is shorthand for running git fetch followed by git merge. So if there aren’t any conflicts, your main should now include the commits from my-feature.

Finally you git push your updated local main to your origin.