I created a repo on GitHub and only have a master branch so far. My local working copy is completely up to date with the remote/origin master on GitHub.
I now want to create a development branch on GitHub so that other people on my team can start pushing changes to development (instead of directly to master) and submit PRs, request code reviews, etc.
So I tried creating a new development branch locally and pushing it:
git checkout -b development git push origin development:master But git just says Everything up-to-date. So I ask:
If I'm current with master, how do I just create a remote development branch that contains an exact copy of master?
4 Answers
When you do
$ git push origin development:master What's actually happening is git is taking <local>:<remote> and updating <remote> to whatever the <local> branch is.
Since you executed git checkout -b development from master, your local development has all the commits master does; hence it shows as everything is up to date.
You can just do
$ git checkout -b development $ git push origin development to push the new branch
2Creating a git develop branch
You can list all of your current branches like this:
git branch -a This shows all of the local and remote branches. Assuming you only have a single master branch, you'd see the following:
* master remotes/origin/master The * means the current branch.
To create a new branch named develop, use the following command:
git checkout -b develop The -b flag creates the branch. Listing the branches now should show:
* develop master remotes/origin/master Changing branches
You shouldn't commit anything directly to the master branch. Instead do all your work on the develop branch and then merge develop into master whenever you have a new public release.
You are already in your develop branch, but if you weren't, the way to switch is as follows:
git checkout develop That's the same way you create a branch but without the -b.
Making changes on develop
When making changes, add and commit as usual:
git add . git commit -m "whatever" The first time you push to your remote do it like so:
git push -u origin develop The -u flag stands for --set-upstream. After the first time you only need to do it like this:
git push Merging develop to master
Once your develop is ready to merge into master you can do it like so:
First switch to your local master branch:
git checkout master To merge develop into master do the following:
git merge develop Then push the changes in local master to the remote master:
git push Done.
Deleting a branch
If you don't need the develop branch anymore, or you just want to delete it and start over, you can do the following:
Delete the remote develop branch:
git push -d origin develop Then delete the local branch:
git branch -d develop The -d means delete.
You can also use git flow. This will automatically create the branch with the right naming convention, it's good practice.
git flow init and to push
git push --set-upstream origin develop This works for me
git push origin development 
