1GIT-CHECKOUT(1) Git Manual GIT-CHECKOUT(1)
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6 git-checkout - Switch branches or restore working tree files
7
9 git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [<branch>]
10 git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] --detach [<branch>]
11 git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [--detach] <commit>
12 git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [[-b|-B|--orphan] <new_branch>] [<start_point>]
13 git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>] [--] <paths>...
14 git checkout [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>...
15 git checkout (-p|--patch) [<tree-ish>] [--] [<paths>...]
16
19 Updates files in the working tree to match the version in the index or
20 the specified tree. If no paths are given, git checkout will also
21 update HEAD to set the specified branch as the current branch.
22 git checkout <branch>
24 To prepare for working on <branch>, switch to it by updating the
25 index and the files in the working tree, and by pointing HEAD at
26 the branch. Local modifications to the files in the working tree
27 are kept, so that they can be committed to the <branch>.
28 If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in
30 exactly one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name, treat
31 as equivalent to
32 $ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>
34 If the branch exists in multiple remotes and one of them is named
36 by the checkout.defaultRemote configuration variable, we’ll use
37 that one for the purposes of disambiguation, even if the <branch>
38 isn’t unique across all remotes. Set it to e.g.
39 checkout.defaultRemote=origin to always checkout remote branches
40 from there if <branch> is ambiguous but exists on the origin
41 remote. See also checkout.defaultRemote in git-config(1).
42 You could omit <branch>, in which case the command degenerates to
44 "check out the current branch", which is a glorified no-op with
45 rather expensive side-effects to show only the tracking
46 information, if exists, for the current branch.
47 git checkout -b|-B <new_branch> [<start point>]
49 Specifying -b causes a new branch to be created as if git-branch(1)
50 were called and then checked out. In this case you can use the
51 --track or --no-track options, which will be passed to git branch.
52 As a convenience, --track without -b implies branch creation; see
53 the description of --track below.
54 If -B is given, <new_branch> is created if it doesn’t exist;
56 otherwise, it is reset. This is the transactional equivalent of
57 $ git branch -f <branch> [<start point>]
59 $ git checkout <branch>
60 that is to say, the branch is not reset/created unless "git
62 checkout" is successful.
63 git checkout --detach [<branch>], git checkout [--detach] <commit>
65 Prepare to work on top of <commit>, by detaching HEAD at it (see
66 "DETACHED HEAD" section), and updating the index and the files in
67 the working tree. Local modifications to the files in the working
68 tree are kept, so that the resulting working tree will be the state
69 recorded in the commit plus the local modifications.
70 When the <commit> argument is a branch name, the --detach option
72 can be used to detach HEAD at the tip of the branch (git checkout
73 <branch> would check out that branch without detaching HEAD).
74 Omitting <branch> detaches HEAD at the tip of the current branch.
76 git checkout [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>...
78 Overwrite paths in the working tree by replacing with the contents
79 in the index or in the <tree-ish> (most often a commit). When a
80 <tree-ish> is given, the paths that match the <pathspec> are
81 updated both in the index and in the working tree.
82 The index may contain unmerged entries because of a previous failed
84 merge. By default, if you try to check out such an entry from the
85 index, the checkout operation will fail and nothing will be checked
86 out. Using -f will ignore these unmerged entries. The contents from
87 a specific side of the merge can be checked out of the index by
88 using --ours or --theirs. With -m, changes made to the working tree
89 file can be discarded to re-create the original conflicted merge
90 result.
91 git checkout (-p|--patch) [<tree-ish>] [--] [<pathspec>...]
93 This is similar to the "check out paths to the working tree from
94 either the index or from a tree-ish" mode described above, but lets
95 you use the interactive interface to show the "diff" output and
96 choose which hunks to use in the result. See below for the
97 description of --patch option.
98
100 -q, --quiet
101 Quiet, suppress feedback messages.
102 --[no-]progress
104 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default
105 when it is attached to a terminal, unless --quiet is specified.
106 This flag enables progress reporting even if not attached to a
107 terminal, regardless of --quiet.
108 -f, --force
110 When switching branches, proceed even if the index or the working
111 tree differs from HEAD. This is used to throw away local changes.
112 When checking out paths from the index, do not fail upon unmerged
114 entries; instead, unmerged entries are ignored.
115 --ours, --theirs
117 When checking out paths from the index, check out stage #2 (ours)
118 or #3 (theirs) for unmerged paths.
119 Note that during git rebase and git pull --rebase, ours and theirs
121 may appear swapped; --ours gives the version from the branch the
122 changes are rebased onto, while --theirs gives the version from the
123 branch that holds your work that is being rebased.
124 This is because rebase is used in a workflow that treats the
126 history at the remote as the shared canonical one, and treats the
127 work done on the branch you are rebasing as the third-party work to
128 be integrated, and you are temporarily assuming the role of the
129 keeper of the canonical history during the rebase. As the keeper of
130 the canonical history, you need to view the history from the remote
131 as ours (i.e. "our shared canonical history"), while what you did
132 on your side branch as theirs (i.e. "one contributor’s work on top
133 of it").
134 -b <new_branch>
136 Create a new branch named <new_branch> and start it at
137 <start_point>; see git-branch(1) for details.
138 -B <new_branch>
140 Creates the branch <new_branch> and start it at <start_point>; if
141 it already exists, then reset it to <start_point>. This is
142 equivalent to running "git branch" with "-f"; see git-branch(1) for
143 details.
144 -t, --track
146 When creating a new branch, set up "upstream" configuration. See
147 "--track" in git-branch(1) for details.
148 If no -b option is given, the name of the new branch will be
150 derived from the remote-tracking branch, by looking at the local
151 part of the refspec configured for the corresponding remote, and
152 then stripping the initial part up to the "*". This would tell us
153 to use "hack" as the local branch when branching off of
154 "origin/hack" (or "remotes/origin/hack", or even
155 "refs/remotes/origin/hack"). If the given name has no slash, or the
156 above guessing results in an empty name, the guessing is aborted.
157 You can explicitly give a name with -b in such a case.
158 --no-track
160 Do not set up "upstream" configuration, even if the
161 branch.autoSetupMerge configuration variable is true.
162 -l
164 Create the new branch’s reflog; see git-branch(1) for details.
165 --detach
167 Rather than checking out a branch to work on it, check out a commit
168 for inspection and discardable experiments. This is the default
169 behavior of "git checkout <commit>" when <commit> is not a branch
170 name. See the "DETACHED HEAD" section below for details.
171 --orphan <new_branch>
173 Create a new orphan branch, named <new_branch>, started from
174 <start_point> and switch to it. The first commit made on this new
175 branch will have no parents and it will be the root of a new
176 history totally disconnected from all the other branches and
177 commits.
178 The index and the working tree are adjusted as if you had
180 previously run "git checkout <start_point>". This allows you to
181 start a new history that records a set of paths similar to
182 <start_point> by easily running "git commit -a" to make the root
183 commit.
184 This can be useful when you want to publish the tree from a commit
186 without exposing its full history. You might want to do this to
187 publish an open source branch of a project whose current tree is
188 "clean", but whose full history contains proprietary or otherwise
189 encumbered bits of code.
190 If you want to start a disconnected history that records a set of
192 paths that is totally different from the one of <start_point>, then
193 you should clear the index and the working tree right after
194 creating the orphan branch by running "git rm -rf ." from the top
195 level of the working tree. Afterwards you will be ready to prepare
196 your new files, repopulating the working tree, by copying them from
197 elsewhere, extracting a tarball, etc.
198 --ignore-skip-worktree-bits
200 In sparse checkout mode, git checkout -- <paths> would update only
201 entries matched by <paths> and sparse patterns in
202 $GIT_DIR/info/sparse-checkout. This option ignores the sparse
203 patterns and adds back any files in <paths>.
204 -m, --merge
206 When switching branches, if you have local modifications to one or
207 more files that are different between the current branch and the
208 branch to which you are switching, the command refuses to switch
209 branches in order to preserve your modifications in context.
210 However, with this option, a three-way merge between the current
211 branch, your working tree contents, and the new branch is done, and
212 you will be on the new branch.
213 When a merge conflict happens, the index entries for conflicting
215 paths are left unmerged, and you need to resolve the conflicts and
216 mark the resolved paths with git add (or git rm if the merge should
217 result in deletion of the path).
218 When checking out paths from the index, this option lets you
220 recreate the conflicted merge in the specified paths.
221 --conflict=<style>
223 The same as --merge option above, but changes the way the
224 conflicting hunks are presented, overriding the merge.conflictStyle
225 configuration variable. Possible values are "merge" (default) and
226 "diff3" (in addition to what is shown by "merge" style, shows the
227 original contents).
228 -p, --patch
230 Interactively select hunks in the difference between the <tree-ish>
231 (or the index, if unspecified) and the working tree. The chosen
232 hunks are then applied in reverse to the working tree (and if a
233 <tree-ish> was specified, the index).
234 This means that you can use git checkout -p to selectively discard
236 edits from your current working tree. See the “Interactive Mode”
237 section of git-add(1) to learn how to operate the --patch mode.
238 --ignore-other-worktrees
240 git checkout refuses when the wanted ref is already checked out by
241 another worktree. This option makes it check the ref out anyway. In
242 other words, the ref can be held by more than one worktree.
243 --[no-]recurse-submodules
245 Using --recurse-submodules will update the content of all
246 initialized submodules according to the commit recorded in the
247 superproject. If local modifications in a submodule would be
248 overwritten the checkout will fail unless -f is used. If nothing
249 (or --no-recurse-submodules) is used, the work trees of submodules
250 will not be updated. Just like git-submodule(1), this will detach
251 the submodules HEAD.
252 --no-guess
254 Do not attempt to create a branch if a remote tracking branch of
255 the same name exists.
256 <branch>
258 Branch to checkout; if it refers to a branch (i.e., a name that,
259 when prepended with "refs/heads/", is a valid ref), then that
260 branch is checked out. Otherwise, if it refers to a valid commit,
261 your HEAD becomes "detached" and you are no longer on any branch
262 (see below for details).
263 You can use the "@{-N}" syntax to refer to the N-th last
265 branch/commit checked out using "git checkout" operation. You may
266 also specify - which is synonymous to "@{-1}".
267 As a special case, you may use "A...B" as a shortcut for the merge
269 base of A and B if there is exactly one merge base. You can leave
270 out at most one of A and B, in which case it defaults to HEAD.
271 <new_branch>
273 Name for the new branch.
274 <start_point>
276 The name of a commit at which to start the new branch; see git-
277 branch(1) for details. Defaults to HEAD.
278 <tree-ish>
280 Tree to checkout from (when paths are given). If not specified, the
281 index will be used.
282
284 HEAD normally refers to a named branch (e.g. master). Meanwhile, each
285 branch refers to a specific commit. Let’s look at a repo with three
286 commits, one of them tagged, and with branch master checked out:
287 HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
289 |
290 v
291 a---b---c branch 'master' (refers to commit 'c')
292 ^
293 |
294 tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
295 When a commit is created in this state, the branch is updated to refer
298 to the new commit. Specifically, git commit creates a new commit d,
299 whose parent is commit c, and then updates branch master to refer to
300 new commit d. HEAD still refers to branch master and so indirectly now
301 refers to commit d:
302 $ edit; git add; git commit
304 HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
306 |
307 v
308 a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
309 ^
310 |
311 tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
312 It is sometimes useful to be able to checkout a commit that is not at
315 the tip of any named branch, or even to create a new commit that is not
316 referenced by a named branch. Let’s look at what happens when we
317 checkout commit b (here we show two ways this may be done):
318 $ git checkout v2.0 # or
320 $ git checkout master^^
321 HEAD (refers to commit 'b')
323 |
324 v
325 a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
326 ^
327 |
328 tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
329 Notice that regardless of which checkout command we use, HEAD now
332 refers directly to commit b. This is known as being in detached HEAD
333 state. It means simply that HEAD refers to a specific commit, as
334 opposed to referring to a named branch. Let’s see what happens when we
335 create a commit:
336 $ edit; git add; git commit
338 HEAD (refers to commit 'e')
340 |
341 v
342 e
343 /
344 a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
345 ^
346 |
347 tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
348 There is now a new commit e, but it is referenced only by HEAD. We can
351 of course add yet another commit in this state:
352 $ edit; git add; git commit
354 HEAD (refers to commit 'f')
356 |
357 v
358 e---f
359 /
360 a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
361 ^
362 |
363 tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
364 In fact, we can perform all the normal Git operations. But, let’s look
367 at what happens when we then checkout master:
368 $ git checkout master
370 HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
372 e---f |
373 / v
374 a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
375 ^
376 |
377 tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
378 It is important to realize that at this point nothing refers to commit
381 f. Eventually commit f (and by extension commit e) will be deleted by
382 the routine Git garbage collection process, unless we create a
383 reference before that happens. If we have not yet moved away from
384 commit f, any of these will create a reference to it:
385 $ git checkout -b foo [1m(1)
387 $ git branch foo [1m(2)
388 $ git tag foo [1m(3)
389 1. creates a new branch foo, which refers to commit f, and then updates
392 HEAD to refer to branch foo. In other words, we’ll no longer be in
393 detached HEAD state after this command.
394 2. similarly creates a new branch foo, which refers to commit f, but
395 leaves HEAD detached.
396 3. creates a new tag foo, which refers to commit f, leaving HEAD
397 detached.
398 If we have moved away from commit f, then we must first recover its
400 object name (typically by using git reflog), and then we can create a
401 reference to it. For example, to see the last two commits to which HEAD
402 referred, we can use either of these commands:
403 $ git reflog -2 HEAD # or
405 $ git log -g -2 HEAD
406
409 When there is only one argument given and it is not -- (e.g. "git
410 checkout abc"), and when the argument is both a valid <tree-ish> (e.g.
411 a branch "abc" exists) and a valid <pathspec> (e.g. a file or a
412 directory whose name is "abc" exists), Git would usually ask you to
413 disambiguate. Because checking out a branch is so common an operation,
414 however, "git checkout abc" takes "abc" as a <tree-ish> in such a
415 situation. Use git checkout -- <pathspec> if you want to checkout these
416 paths out of the index.
417
419 1. The following sequence checks out the master branch, reverts the
420 Makefile to two revisions back, deletes hello.c by mistake, and
421 gets it back from the index.
422 $ git checkout master [1m(1)
424 $ git checkout master~2 Makefile [1m(2)
425 $ rm -f hello.c
426 $ git checkout hello.c [1m(3)
427 1. switch branch
429 2. take a file out of another commit
430 3. restore hello.c from the index
431 If you want to check out all C source files out of the index, you
433 can say
434 $ git checkout -- '*.c'
436 Note the quotes around *.c. The file hello.c will also be checked
438 out, even though it is no longer in the working tree, because the
439 file globbing is used to match entries in the index (not in the
440 working tree by the shell).
441 If you have an unfortunate branch that is named hello.c, this step
443 would be confused as an instruction to switch to that branch. You
444 should instead write:
445 $ git checkout -- hello.c
447 2. After working in the wrong branch, switching to the correct branch
450 would be done using:
451 $ git checkout mytopic
453 However, your "wrong" branch and correct "mytopic" branch may
455 differ in files that you have modified locally, in which case the
456 above checkout would fail like this:
457 $ git checkout mytopic
459 error: You have local changes to 'frotz'; not switching branches.
460 You can give the -m flag to the command, which would try a
462 three-way merge:
463 $ git checkout -m mytopic
465 Auto-merging frotz
466 After this three-way merge, the local modifications are not
468 registered in your index file, so git diff would show you what
469 changes you made since the tip of the new branch.
470 3. When a merge conflict happens during switching branches with the -m
472 option, you would see something like this:
473 $ git checkout -m mytopic
475 Auto-merging frotz
476 ERROR: Merge conflict in frotz
477 fatal: merge program failed
478 At this point, git diff shows the changes cleanly merged as in the
480 previous example, as well as the changes in the conflicted files.
481 Edit and resolve the conflict and mark it resolved with git add as
482 usual:
483 $ edit frotz
485 $ git add frotz
486
489 Part of the git(1) suite
490Git 2.21.0 02/24/2019 GIT-CHECKOUT(1)