How to recover from making changes in master instead of development branches?

[theTechnaddict]

I've been using sourcetree with gitflow, my first steps with these tools.

In error I made and commited changes in the master branch which is now 'ahead' of the develop branch.

By ahead I simply mean that the files listed under master have changes in them that have never been in Develop - hence I am worried that if I now develop a feature branch from develop I am going to be doing so on a version that is less developed than the master and risk losing those changes when develop later gets merged to master on completing a new release.

The changes I made were good and I want to preserve them, and get back to creating new features as branches from the development branch, later merging them into the master as new releases.

What is the best way to get things back on track?

[Alejandro Conde Carrillo · Accepted solution]

I think you could:

1. Checkout your development branch.
2. Merge master to dev. Resolve conflicts if any.
3. commit changes to dev branch (now containing changes from master).

[theTechnaddict]

Thanks Alex,

I am unclear about checking out... This page in the manual talks about checking out from a remote source to the local repository..

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Checkout+a+branch+into+a+local+repository

Is this what you mean?

My first reaction was to switch to the develop branch and hit the checkout button on the toolbar. It requested that I select the branch that I wish to change my working tree to... Is this what you mean?

Many thanks for your patience with somebody who is learning.

[Seth]

You should also read chapters 1-3 of the Git Book.

[Seth]

In SourceTree, you can right-click on the branch name in the left pane, and select "Checkout...", or just double-click on it.

[theTechnaddict]

Sorted - thanks to both