Creating and using branches with Git

In your github fork, you need to keep your master branch clean, I mean by clean without any changes, like that you can create at any time a branch from your master. Each time, that you want commit a bug or a feature, you need to create a branch for it, which will be somehow the copy of your master branch.

When you will do a pull request on a branch, you can continue to work on an another branch and make an another pull request on this other branch.

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

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.