cheking out, b-switch

Stefan Mueller

Hallo,

I'm bit confused by the checkout dialog. In my understanding Checkout New Branch will create a new branch and checks it out as explained in the Tutorial Using Branches git branch, git checkout -b. That is neccessary when I e.g. want to create a branch to add a hotfix. 

But when I use Sourcetree's dialog it seem more that it only add a remote branch to my local working copy and make it the active branch. It updates the files in the working directory to match the version stored in that branch.

It doesn't matter on which tab I click it shows me only existing branches. The only difference is that Checkout New Branch doesn't show the branches what triggers the warning shown at ther very end of this post.

I found some more explaination on git SCM - git-checkout - Switch and git SCM - 3.2 Git Branching but it rather top ups confusion than making me understand.

Do you mind the explain the Checkout in some more detail to me?

In addtion, what effect does the following option have? 
Local branch should track remote branch

  

 

minnsey

Hi
The 'Branch' command runs the follow git commands 

```
git branch (name) (commit)
git checkount (name)

```

where the (commit) is optional. This creates a new branch at the commit or the current HEAD. It then checks out the new branch

The 'Checkout New Branch' functionality runs:

```
git checkout -b (name) (remote)

```

Optionally tracking or not. This creates a new local Branch based on the HEAD of the named remote branch

In both circumstances you end up with a new local branch, but the 'Create New Branch' allows that to be created from an arbitrary remote branch, where as 'Branch' functionality works against the current working copy branch.


the track/no Track option determines whether the local branch is associated with the remote branch or just created from it. If you don't track then you can't push your new branch to the remote host until you explicitly set that relationship up at push time.