Basic Understandings

A branch in Git is essentially a pointer to a specific commit in the repository’s history. The primary branch, usually called main, represents the production-ready code. Additional branches are used to develop features, fix bugs, or experiment without affecting the main branch.

main: Default Local Branch created with git init. Prior to Git version 2.28 (released in 2020), the default branch was named master.
origin/main: When you clone a repository using git clone <repository_url>, Git automatically sets up a remote named origin. This is the default remote name. The default remote branch is usually origin/main, which tracks the main branch of the remote repository.

Local

Create a New Branch

git checkout -b <branch_name> # create and switch to new branch

Switch Between Branches

git checkout <branch_name>

View All Branches

git branch

Delete a Local Branch

git branch -d <branch_name>
git branch -D <branch_name> # Force Delete

-D is for a brach hasn’t been merged yet and you want to delete it anyway.

Work with Remote

Push a Branch to a Remote

git push -u origin <loacl_branch_name> # push loacl_branch to origin and set it up to track origin/main 

Track a Specific Remote Branch

If a branch exists on the remote but not locally, you can create a local branch that tracks the remote branch:

git checkout --track origin/<branch_name>

Fetch All Remote Branches

git fetch # update local repository with the latest references to all branches from the remote

Delete a Remote Branch

Once a branch is no longer needed, you can delete it from the remote:

git push origin --delete <branch_name>

Merge and Rebase

Merge

1. Switch to the branch you want to merge into
2. Perform the merge
3. (Optional) Resolve merge conflicts

git checkout main
git merge <branch_name>
#==============
git add <resolved_files>
git commit

Rebase

For more details, please refer to Details about Rebase

git rebase <branch_name>
#e.g.
git rebase main # This rebases the current branch onto main.
git rebase -i <base_commit> # interactive rebasing to edit