In the previous post about _git_, we had a look at what _git_ is and got our feet wet with a bit of it.
In this post, I will be moving forward with the topic, I will be talking about branches, how to work with them and finally what merging is and how it works.
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## Requirements {#requirements}
The same requirement we had from the last post, obviously _git_.
## Branching and Merging {#branching-and-merging}
### What is a branch? {#what-is-a-branch}
_git_ [documentation](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v1/Git-Branching-What-a-Branch-Is) describes it as:
> "A branch in Git is simply a lightweight movable pointer to one of the[se] commits."
Usually, people coming from _svn_ think of **branches** differently. In _git_, a branch is simply a pointer to a commit.
So let's verify that claim to see if it's true.
Remember our example repository from the last post ? We'll be using it here.
The commit is, of course, different because this is a different computer with a different repository from scratch. Anyway, it seems from the log message that both _mybranch_ and _master_ are pointing to same commit _SHA_. Technically they are pointing to **HEAD**.
From reading the output of log, we can see that the _master_ branch points to a different commit than _mybranch_.
To visualize this, let's look at it in a different way.
```text
$ git log --graph --oneline --all
* b30f4e0 (HEAD -> mybranch) Adding an empty line
* 643a353 (master) Second commit
```
What the above suggests is that our two branches have different contents at this stage. In other words, if I switch back to the _master_ branch what do you think we will find in `README.md` ?
```text
$ git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'
$ cat README.md
# Example
This is an example repository.
This repository is trying to give you a hands on experience with git to complement the post.
$
```
And if we switch back to _mybranch_.
```text
$ git checkout mybranch
Switched to branch 'mybranch'
$ cat README.md
# Example
This is an example repository.
This repository is trying to give you a hands on experience with git to complement the post.
$
```
Let's add another commit to make easier to see the changes than an empty line.
```text
$ echo "Let's add a line to mybranch." >> README.md
$ git add README.md
$ git commit -m "Adding more commits to mybranch"
[mybranch f25dd5d] Adding more commits to mybranch
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
```
Now let's check the tree again.
```text
$ git log --graph --oneline --all
* f25dd5d (HEAD -> mybranch) Adding more commits to mybranch
* b30f4e0 Adding an empty line
* 643a353 (master) Second commit
```
Let's also check the difference between our _master_ branch and _mybranch_.
```text
$ git diff master mybranch
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index b4734ad..f07e71e 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -2,3 +2,5 @@
This is an example repository.
This repository is trying to give you a hands on experience with git to complement the post.
+
+Let's add a line to mybranch.
```
The `+` suggests an addition and `-` suggests a deletion of a line. As we can see from the `+` shown before the two lines added to the `README.md` file, _mybranch_ has these additions.
You can read more about _git_ branches in the _git_ [documentation](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v1/Git-Branching-What-a-Branch-Is) page.
### What is merging ? {#what-is-merging}
That's all fine so far, but how do I get these changes from _mybranch_ to the _master_ branch ?
The answer to that is also as easy as all the steps taken so far. _git_ merges **from** a branch you specify **to** the branch you are currently on.
```text
$ # Checking which branch we are on
$ git branch
master
* mybranch
$ # We are on mybranch and we need to put these changes into master
$ # First we need to move to our master branch
$ git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'
$ # Now we can merge from mybranch
$ git merge mybranch
Updating 643a353..f25dd5d
Fast-forward
README.md | 2 ++
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
```
As we can see. The changes in _mybranch_ have been merged into the _master_ branch.
I'll explain to you how I like to work and my personal merging strategy. I will keep out some details as they use concepts that are more advanced than what has been discussed so far.
### _master_ branch {#master-branch}
To me, the _master_ branch stays always up to date with the **remote**_master_ branch. In other words, I do not make commits against the _master_ branch in the project I'm working on.
### branch {#branch}
If I want to work on the project, I start by updating the _master_ branch and then branching it as we've seen before. The name of the branch is always indicative on what it holds, or what kind of work I am doing on it.
As long as I am working on my dev branch, I keep updating the _master_ branch and then porting the changes into my dev branch. This way, at the end the code is compatible and I am testing with the latest version of the code. This is very helpful and makes merging later a breeze.
### merging {#merging}
After my work is done, I push my branch to the remote server and ask for the maintainer of the project to merge my changes into the _master_ branch after reviewing it, of course. To explain this in a very simple manner, all that mumbo jumpo talk previously simply means someone else did the merge into master.
## Conclusion {#conclusion}
In this post, I talked about what are branches. We went ahead and worked a little bit with branches and then mentioned merging. At the end of the post I talked a bit about my merging strategy.
In the next post, I will be talking about remotes.
