1GIT-SWITCH(1)                     Git Manual                     GIT-SWITCH(1)
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NAME

6       git-switch - Switch branches
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SYNOPSIS

9       git switch [<options>] [--no-guess] <branch>
10       git switch [<options>] --detach [<start-point>]
11       git switch [<options>] (-c|-C) <new-branch> [<start-point>]
12       git switch [<options>] --orphan <new-branch>
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DESCRIPTION

15       Switch to a specified branch. The working tree and the index are
16       updated to match the branch. All new commits will be added to the tip
17       of this branch.
18
19       Optionally a new branch could be created with either -c, -C,
20       automatically from a remote branch of same name (see --guess), or
21       detach the working tree from any branch with --detach, along with
22       switching.
23
24       Switching branches does not require a clean index and working tree
25       (i.e. no differences compared to HEAD). The operation is aborted
26       however if the operation leads to loss of local changes, unless told
27       otherwise with --discard-changes or --merge.
28
29       THIS COMMAND IS EXPERIMENTAL. THE BEHAVIOR MAY CHANGE.
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OPTIONS

32       <branch>
33           Branch to switch to.
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35       <new-branch>
36           Name for the new branch.
37
38       <start-point>
39           The starting point for the new branch. Specifying a <start-point>
40           allows you to create a branch based on some other point in history
41           than where HEAD currently points. (Or, in the case of --detach,
42           allows you to inspect and detach from some other point.)
43
44           You can use the @{-N} syntax to refer to the N-th last
45           branch/commit switched to using "git switch" or "git checkout"
46           operation. You may also specify - which is synonymous to @{-1}.
47           This is often used to switch quickly between two branches, or to
48           undo a branch switch by mistake.
49
50           As a special case, you may use A...B as a shortcut for the merge
51           base of A and B if there is exactly one merge base. You can leave
52           out at most one of A and B, in which case it defaults to HEAD.
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54       -c <new-branch>, --create <new-branch>
55           Create a new branch named <new-branch> starting at <start-point>
56           before switching to the branch. This is a convenient shortcut for:
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58               $ git branch <new-branch>
59               $ git switch <new-branch>
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61       -C <new-branch>, --force-create <new-branch>
62           Similar to --create except that if <new-branch> already exists, it
63           will be reset to <start-point>. This is a convenient shortcut for:
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65               $ git branch -f <new-branch>
66               $ git switch <new-branch>
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68       -d, --detach
69           Switch to a commit for inspection and discardable experiments. See
70           the "DETACHED HEAD" section in git-checkout(1) for details.
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72       --guess, --no-guess
73           If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in
74           exactly one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name, treat
75           as equivalent to
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77               $ git switch -c <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>
78
79           If the branch exists in multiple remotes and one of them is named
80           by the checkout.defaultRemote configuration variable, we’ll use
81           that one for the purposes of disambiguation, even if the <branch>
82           isn’t unique across all remotes. Set it to e.g.
83           checkout.defaultRemote=origin to always checkout remote branches
84           from there if <branch> is ambiguous but exists on the origin
85           remote. See also checkout.defaultRemote in git-config(1).
86
87           --guess is the default behavior. Use --no-guess to disable it.
88
89           The default behavior can be set via the checkout.guess
90           configuration variable.
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92       -f, --force
93           An alias for --discard-changes.
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95       --discard-changes
96           Proceed even if the index or the working tree differs from HEAD.
97           Both the index and working tree are restored to match the switching
98           target. If --recurse-submodules is specified, submodule content is
99           also restored to match the switching target. This is used to throw
100           away local changes.
101
102       -m, --merge
103           If you have local modifications to one or more files that are
104           different between the current branch and the branch to which you
105           are switching, the command refuses to switch branches in order to
106           preserve your modifications in context. However, with this option,
107           a three-way merge between the current branch, your working tree
108           contents, and the new branch is done, and you will be on the new
109           branch.
110
111           When a merge conflict happens, the index entries for conflicting
112           paths are left unmerged, and you need to resolve the conflicts and
113           mark the resolved paths with git add (or git rm if the merge should
114           result in deletion of the path).
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116       --conflict=<style>
117           The same as --merge option above, but changes the way the
118           conflicting hunks are presented, overriding the merge.conflictStyle
119           configuration variable. Possible values are "merge" (default),
120           "diff3", and "zdiff3".
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122       -q, --quiet
123           Quiet, suppress feedback messages.
124
125       --progress, --no-progress
126           Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default
127           when it is attached to a terminal, unless --quiet is specified.
128           This flag enables progress reporting even if not attached to a
129           terminal, regardless of --quiet.
130
131       -t, --track [direct|inherit]
132           When creating a new branch, set up "upstream" configuration.  -c is
133           implied. See --track in git-branch(1) for details.
134
135           If no -c option is given, the name of the new branch will be
136           derived from the remote-tracking branch, by looking at the local
137           part of the refspec configured for the corresponding remote, and
138           then stripping the initial part up to the "*". This would tell us
139           to use hack as the local branch when branching off of origin/hack
140           (or remotes/origin/hack, or even refs/remotes/origin/hack). If the
141           given name has no slash, or the above guessing results in an empty
142           name, the guessing is aborted. You can explicitly give a name with
143           -c in such a case.
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145       --no-track
146           Do not set up "upstream" configuration, even if the
147           branch.autoSetupMerge configuration variable is true.
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149       --orphan <new-branch>
150           Create a new orphan branch, named <new-branch>. All tracked files
151           are removed.
152
153       --ignore-other-worktrees
154           git switch refuses when the wanted ref is already checked out by
155           another worktree. This option makes it check the ref out anyway. In
156           other words, the ref can be held by more than one worktree.
157
158       --recurse-submodules, --no-recurse-submodules
159           Using --recurse-submodules will update the content of all active
160           submodules according to the commit recorded in the superproject. If
161           nothing (or --no-recurse-submodules) is used, submodules working
162           trees will not be updated. Just like git-submodule(1), this will
163           detach HEAD of the submodules.
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EXAMPLES

166       The following command switches to the "master" branch:
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168           $ git switch master
169
170       After working in the wrong branch, switching to the correct branch
171       would be done using:
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173           $ git switch mytopic
174
175       However, your "wrong" branch and correct "mytopic" branch may differ in
176       files that you have modified locally, in which case the above switch
177       would fail like this:
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179           $ git switch mytopic
180           error: You have local changes to 'frotz'; not switching branches.
181
182       You can give the -m flag to the command, which would try a three-way
183       merge:
184
185           $ git switch -m mytopic
186           Auto-merging frotz
187
188       After this three-way merge, the local modifications are not registered
189       in your index file, so git diff would show you what changes you made
190       since the tip of the new branch.
191
192       To switch back to the previous branch before we switched to mytopic
193       (i.e. "master" branch):
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195           $ git switch -
196
197       You can grow a new branch from any commit. For example, switch to
198       "HEAD~3" and create branch "fixup":
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200           $ git switch -c fixup HEAD~3
201           Switched to a new branch 'fixup'
202
203       If you want to start a new branch from a remote branch of the same
204       name:
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206           $ git switch new-topic
207           Branch 'new-topic' set up to track remote branch 'new-topic' from 'origin'
208           Switched to a new branch 'new-topic'
209
210       To check out commit HEAD~3 for temporary inspection or experiment
211       without creating a new branch:
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213           $ git switch --detach HEAD~3
214           HEAD is now at 9fc9555312 Merge branch 'cc/shared-index-permbits'
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216       If it turns out whatever you have done is worth keeping, you can always
217       create a new name for it (without switching away):
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219           $ git switch -c good-surprises
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CONFIGURATION

222       Everything below this line in this section is selectively included from
223       the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as what’s
224       found there:
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226       checkout.defaultRemote
227           When you run git checkout <something> or git switch <something> and
228           only have one remote, it may implicitly fall back on checking out
229           and tracking e.g.  origin/<something>. This stops working as soon
230           as you have more than one remote with a <something> reference. This
231           setting allows for setting the name of a preferred remote that
232           should always win when it comes to disambiguation. The typical
233           use-case is to set this to origin.
234
235           Currently this is used by git-switch(1) and git-checkout(1) when
236           git checkout <something> or git switch <something> will checkout
237           the <something> branch on another remote, and by git-worktree(1)
238           when git worktree add refers to a remote branch. This setting might
239           be used for other checkout-like commands or functionality in the
240           future.
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242       checkout.guess
243           Provides the default value for the --guess or --no-guess option in
244           git checkout and git switch. See git-switch(1) and git-checkout(1).
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246       checkout.workers
247           The number of parallel workers to use when updating the working
248           tree. The default is one, i.e. sequential execution. If set to a
249           value less than one, Git will use as many workers as the number of
250           logical cores available. This setting and
251           checkout.thresholdForParallelism affect all commands that perform
252           checkout. E.g. checkout, clone, reset, sparse-checkout, etc.
253
254           Note: Parallel checkout usually delivers better performance for
255           repositories located on SSDs or over NFS. For repositories on
256           spinning disks and/or machines with a small number of cores, the
257           default sequential checkout often performs better. The size and
258           compression level of a repository might also influence how well the
259           parallel version performs.
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261       checkout.thresholdForParallelism
262           When running parallel checkout with a small number of files, the
263           cost of subprocess spawning and inter-process communication might
264           outweigh the parallelization gains. This setting allows you to
265           define the minimum number of files for which parallel checkout
266           should be attempted. The default is 100.
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SEE ALSO

269       git-checkout(1), git-branch(1)
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GIT

272       Part of the git(1) suite
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276Git 2.43.0                        11/20/2023                     GIT-SWITCH(1)
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