Creating and using branches with Git

When working with a repository on your local machine you need to keep your master branch clean.

Ideally, every time you want commit a bug or a feature, you should create a branch for it, which will be somehow the copy of your master branch.

This way, when you perform a pull request on a branch, you can continue to work on another branch and make another pull request on that other branch.

Before create a new branch pull the changes from upstream, your master need to be up to date.

Create the branch on your local machine :

$ git branch <name_of_your_new_branch>  

Push the branch on github :

$ git push origin <name_of_your_new_branch>

Switch to your new branch :

$ git checkout <name_of_your_new_branch>

When you want to commit something in your branch, be sure to be in your branch.

You can see all branches created by using

$ git branch

Which will show :

* approval_messages
  master
  master_clean

Add a new remote for you branch :

$ git remote add <name_of_your_remote> <url>

Push changes from your commit into your branch :

$ git push origin <name_of_your_remote>

Delete a branch on your local filesytem :

$ git branch -d <name_of_your_new_branch>

Delete the branch on github :

$ git push origin :<name_of_your_new_branch>

Note: ':' tells git to delete the branch.

If you want to change default branch, it's so easy with github, in your fork go into Admin and in the drop-down list default branch choose what you want.

The contents for this brief walkthrough were originally obtained here.