Various ways to create a branch in git from another branch:
This answer adds some additional insight, not already present in the existing answers, regarding just the title of the question itself (Create a branch in Git from another branch), but does not address the more narrow specifics of the question which already have sufficient answers here.
I'm adding this because I really needed to know how to do #1 below just now (create a new branch from a branch I do NOT have checked out), and it wasn't obvious how to do it, and Google searches led to here as a top search result. So, I'll share my findings here. This isn't touched upon well, if at all, by any other answer here.
While I'm at it, I'll also add my other most-common git branch
commands I use in my regular workflow, below.
1. To create a new branch from a branch you do NOT have checked out:
Create branch2
from branch1
while you have any branch whatsoever checked out (ex: let's say you have master
checked out):
git branch branch2 branch1
The general format is:
git branch <new_branch> [from_branch]
man git branch
shows it as follows. What I call <new_branch>
is what they call <branchname>
, and what I call [from_branch]
is what they call [<start-point>]
:
git branch [--track | --no-track] [-l] [-f] <branchname> [<start-point>]
2. To create a new branch from the branch you DO have checked out:
git branch new_branch
This is great for making backups before rebasing, squashing, hard resetting, etc.--before doing anything which could mess up your branch badly.
Ex: I'm on feature_branch1
, and I'm about to squash 20 commits into 1 using git rebase -i master
. In case I ever want to "undo" this, let's back up this branch first! I do this ALL...THE...TIME and find it super helpful and comforting to know I can always easily go back to this backup branch and re-branch off of it to try again in case I mess up feature_branch1
in the process:
git branch feature_branch1_BAK_20200814-1320hrs_about_to_squash
The 20200814-1320hrs
part is the date and time in format YYYYMMDD-HHMMhrs
, so that would be 13:20hrs (1:20pm) on 14 Aug. 2020. This way I have an easy way to find my backup branches until I'm sure I'm ready to delete them. If you don't do this and you mess up badly, you have to use git reflog
to go find your branch prior to messing it up, which is much harder, more stressful, and more error-prone.
3. To create and check out a new branch from the branch you DO have checked out:
git checkout -b new_branch
To make it obvious what is happening there, know that this one command above is equivalent to these two separate commands:
git branch new_branch
git checkout new_branch
4. To rename a branch
Just like renaming a regular file or folder in the terminal, git
considered "renaming" to be more like a 'm'ove command, so you use git branch -m
to rename a branch. Here's the general format:
git branch -m <old_name> <new_name>
man git branch
shows it like this:
git branch (-m | -M) [<oldbranch>] <newbranch>
Example: let's rename branch_1
to branch_1.5
:
git branch -m branch_1 branch_1.5