Manage changes with GitHub branches

In the Edit Steps Locally section, we walked through the process of creating and adding your changes to the main branch of a project.

However, most code change to workflows involve sharing and reviewing changes before deployment. You can do this by creating, testing and sharing your changes on a new GitHub branch, then, once final, merging them into main for deployment.

tip

There are LOTS of different strategies for branching and reviewing code on Git. (Like GitHub Flow or "That Famous @nvie Post" for example!) This guide is meant to give you a very brief introduction to branches in Git, but it is not meant to dictate the "right way".

Let's pick up the workflow when you git pull -ed the latest changes of the repo to your local folder.

1. Running git checkout -b {branch_name} will create and switch over to a new branch. When you start editing your steps, the changes will be kept on this branch, managed separately from main.

2. To test the changes locally, check out the The CLI docs.

3. Just as you've seen when working on main, when you're done check which files you changed with git status.

4. Then use git add {filepath} followed by git commit -m {change notes} to prepare the changes to be merged into the repo.

5. The following command will push your changes to the remote repository as a separate, new branch: git push --set-upstream origin {branch_name}.

6. On GitHub, you can create a Pull Request to get your changes reviewed and approved.

   

   

7. As you keep working with branches, make sure you check which branch you're on with git status.

8. To keep your local copy up to date with the remote repo, switch to main with git checkout main and hit git pull to pull any changes.

9. If you're still working on your separate branch while main has been updated remotely and want integrate the remote changes, use git checkout main, then git pull, then git checkout {working_branch_name} followed by git merge main to merge changes from main into your working branch.