Git Helpful Commands

How to Apply Latest Changes from Main to Active Branch

When working in your own branch of code, it is likely the main branch from which you have created your active branch will have changes when you attempt to merge your branch back to main.

This can cause frustration when ready to merge the latest changes in your active branch back in the main branch.

There are two approaches to take in order ot overcome this requirement.

• Merging
• Rebasing

Use Merge when you want to keep a record of all changes made, when a safe method to update is needed without changing past work, or when working with others on a feature and need to track how changes from main were added to your branch.

Use Rebse when a cleaner, linear commit history is required, to avoid merge commits and prefer all commits to appear as thought they are made in sequence, or working on branches that have not been shared with others.

Merging

Allows the integration of changes from one branch into another.

Will create a new commit that combines changes from both branches.

• Ensure you are in your active branch

git checkout <your_branch>

• Fetch that latest changes

git fetch origin

• Merge the main branch into your branch

git merge origin/main

• Any merge conflicts must be resolved.

• Commit the merge if not handled by git

Rebasing

Rebasing will move your branch commits on top of the latest commits in main.

This approach creates a cleaner project history.

• Switch to your branch

git checkout <your_branch>

• Fetch latest changes

git fetch origin

• Rebase your branch onto main

git rebase origin/master

• Resolve any conflicts as they are presented

• Continue rebase after conflict resolution

• Force Push your branch to update remote history

git push origin <your_branch> --force