Branches - Parallel Universes

Branches

Scenario: You're mid-way through a risky new feature when an urgent bug needs fixing on the live site. You don't want your half-done feature going out. Branches solve exactly this: work on the feature in isolation, switch away to fix the bug, and come back.

A branch is an independent line of commits. The default is usually main.

Command	Does
`git branch`	List branches (`*` marks current)
`git branch feature`	Create a branch
`git switch feature`	Switch to it (modern)
`git switch -c feature`	Create and switch
`git checkout feature`	Switch to it (older syntax)
`git branch -d feature`	Delete a merged branch

$ git switch -c feature-login
Switched to a new branch 'feature-login'
$ git branch
* feature-login
  main

Analogy: Branching is a parallel universe for your code. Commits you make on feature-login don't touch main at all until you decide to merge them back.

Tip: git switch (create/change branches) and git restore (discard file changes) are the modern replacements for the overloaded git checkout, which did both and confused everyone.