Git feature branch & merge

Start with your master branch

git checkout master
git fetch origin

If your local master has been modified, you can reset its state.

git reset --hard origin/master

Checkout a new feature branch.

git checkout -b my-feature

Make changes in this branch, committing as usual.

git add file.txt
git commit -m "add my file.txt"

You can push your branch to allow others and yourself to evaluate and commit further to it.

git push -u origin my-feature

"-u" is shorthand for "--set-upstream". Therefore "git push -u origin" tells git you want to push this new branch to the same origin as the rest of the repository, without this flag Git wouldn't know where to push to.

It’s time to test, review, get approval, etc. for your branch to be merged into master!

Now we merge my-feature into master:

git checkout master
git pull
git pull origin my-feature
git push

Here we checkout master, making sure to be at the latest revision with git pull. Next you pull in the changes from the my-feature branch, git pull is shorthand for running git fetch followed by git merge. So if there aren’t any conflicts, your master should now include the commits from my-feature.

Finally you git push your updated local master to your origin.