What is a “branch” ?
If you have read the previous two chapters, you should already know that commit is the most fundamental part in Git. Diverged history points (alternate future) makes it possible to create branches. In this chapter I’m going to tell you about the “branches” you knew before – what are those, and why do you need them?
It appears that branches which you see in Git client, are only labels by themselves. It’s a human-readable reference to a commit. It’s like a Domain Name System (DNS). Domain name resolves to an IP address, and the branch resolves to a Git commit.
This brings us the first valuable property of a branch. Your commit can have as many labels as you want, and because of that, labels don’t have a time they’ve been created. Remember the task from the previous chapter? Have a look at the picture below. I’ve just added 5 “branches” to the dangling commit I had, while the branch was created at 28 of march, branches/labels are placed now.
The second and most valuable point is that removing a branch doesn’t remove the commit itself. It solely removes the label on that commit. I repeat – it SOLELY removes the label on that commit. Very important! Commit stays in history, and even if you do not see it, you can find it as I’ve already described in the previous chapter.
Enough theory it’s time for another exercise.
Read more: GIT: Learn by doing. Chapter 2