Create Git branch with current changes

987
votes

I started working on my master branch thinking that my task would be easy. After a while I realized it would take more work and I want to do all this work in a new branch.

How can I create a new branch and take all these changes with me without dirtying master?

5
gitgit-branch
possible duplicate of Move existing, uncommited work to a new branch in Git – Marijn
dup of stackoverflow.com/questions/2569459/… – andrej
Yes these are duplicate questions, but the wording is so different that I think this is useful to keep. Note the keywords here: branch current changes vs existing uncommited branch. Anyone who speaks English will immediately see that they are the same, but search engines probably won't. Keep this question. – SMBiggs
The latest/better answer: stackoverflow.com/a/2569513/1038812 – Matthew
@Matthew Thank you. I have reorganized my answer below to put first the 2.23 git switch (that I previously documented back in 2019) – VonC

5 Answers

814
votes

If you hadn't made any commit yet, only (1: branch) and (3: checkout) would be enough.
Or, in one command: git checkout -b newBranch

With Git 2.23+ (Q3 2019), the new command git switch would create the branch in one line (with the same kind of reset --hard, so beware of its effect):

git switch -f -c topic/wip HEAD~3

As mentioned in the git reset man page:

$ git branch topic/wip     # (1)
$ git reset --hard HEAD~3  # (2)  NOTE: use $git reset --soft HEAD~3 (explanation below)
$ git checkout topic/wip   # (3)
  1. You have made some commits, but realize they were premature to be in the "master" branch. You want to continue polishing them in a topic branch, so create "topic/wip" branch off of the current HEAD.
  2. Rewind the master branch to get rid of those three commits.
  3. Switch to "topic/wip" branch and keep working.

Again: new way (since 2019 and Git2.23) to do all that in one command:

git switch -f -c topic/wip HEAD~3

Note: due to the "destructive" effect of a git reset --hard command (it does resets the index and working tree. Any changes to tracked files in the working tree since <commit> are discarded), I would rather go with:

$ git reset --soft HEAD~3  # (2)

This would make sure I'm not losing any private file (not added to the index).
The --soft option won't touch the index file nor the working tree at all (but resets the head to <commit>, just like all modes do).

307
votes

Like stated in this question: Git: Create a branch from unstagged/uncommited changes on master: stash is not necessary.

Just use:

git checkout -b topic/newbranch

Any uncommitted work will be taken along to the new branch.

If you try to push you will get the following message

fatal: The current branch feature/NEWBRANCH has no upstream branch. To push the current branch and set the remote as upstream, use

git push --set-upstream origin feature/feature/NEWBRANCH

Just do as suggested to create the branch remotely:

git push --set-upstream origin feature/feature/NEWBRANCH

88
votes

Follow these steps:

  1. Create a new branch:

    git branch newfeature

  2. Checkout new branch: (this will not reset your work.)

    git checkout newfeature

  3. Now commit your work on this new branch:

    git commit -s

Using above steps will keep your original branch clean and you dont have to do any 'git reset --hard'.

35
votes

Since you haven't made any commits yet, you can save all your changes to the stash, create and switch to a new branch, then pop those changes back into your working tree:

git stash  # save local modifications to new stash
git checkout -b topic/newbranch
git stash pop  # apply stash and remove it from the stash list
15
votes

To add new changes to a new branch and push to remote:

git branch branch/name
git checkout branch/name
git push origin branch/name

Often times I forget to add the origin part to push and get confused why I don't see the new branch/commit in bitbucket