GIT-CHECKOUT(1) Git Manual GIT-CHECKOUT(1)

NAME

git-checkout - Switch branches or restore working tree files

SYNOPSIS

git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [<branch>]
git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] --detach [<branch>]
git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [--detach] <commit>
git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [[-b|-B|--orphan] <new-branch>] [<start-point>]
git checkout [-f] <tree-ish> [--] <pathspec>...
git checkout [-f] <tree-ish> --pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul]
git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [--] <pathspec>...
git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] --pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul]
git checkout (-p|--patch) [<tree-ish>] [--] [<pathspec>...]

DESCRIPTION

Updates files in the working tree to match the version in the index
or the specified tree. If no pathspec was given, git checkout will
also update HEAD to set the specified branch as the current branch.

git checkout [<branch>]
To prepare for working on <branch>, switch to it by updating the
index and the files in the working tree, and by pointing HEAD at
the branch. Local modifications to the files in the working tree
are kept, so that they can be committed to the <branch>.

If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch
in exactly one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name and
--no-guess is not specified, treat as equivalent to

$ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>

You could omit <branch>, in which case the command degenerates to
"check out the current branch", which is a glorified no-op with
rather expensive side-effects to show only the tracking
information, if it exists, for the current branch.

git checkout -b|-B <new-branch> [<start-point>]
Specifying -b causes a new branch to be created as if git-
branch(1) were called and then checked out. In this case you can
use the --track or --no-track options, which will be passed to
git branch. As a convenience, --track without -b implies branch
creation; see the description of --track below.

If -B is given, <new-branch> is created if it doesn't exist;
otherwise, it is reset. This is the transactional equivalent of

$ git branch -f <branch> [<start-point>]
$ git checkout <branch>

that is to say, the branch is not reset/created unless "git
checkout" is successful (e.g., when the branch is in use in
another worktree, not just the current branch stays the same, but
the branch is not reset to the start-point, either).

git checkout --detach [<branch>], git checkout [--detach] <commit>
Prepare to work on top of <commit>, by detaching HEAD at it (see
"DETACHED HEAD" section), and updating the index and the files in
the working tree. Local modifications to the files in the working
tree are kept, so that the resulting working tree will be the
state recorded in the commit plus the local modifications.

When the <commit> argument is a branch name, the --detach option
can be used to detach HEAD at the tip of the branch (git checkout
<branch> would check out that branch without detaching HEAD).

Omitting <branch> detaches HEAD at the tip of the current branch.

git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>]
[--] <pathspec>..., git checkout
[-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>]
--pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul]
Overwrite the contents of the files that match the pathspec. When
the <tree-ish> (most often a commit) is not given, overwrite
working tree with the contents in the index. When the <tree-ish>
is given, overwrite both the index and the working tree with the
contents at the <tree-ish>.

The index may contain unmerged entries because of a previous
failed merge. By default, if you try to check out such an entry
from the index, the checkout operation will fail and nothing will
be checked out. Using -f will ignore these unmerged entries. The
contents from a specific side of the merge can be checked out of
the index by using --ours or --theirs. With -m, changes made to
the working tree file can be discarded to re-create the original
conflicted merge result.

git checkout (-p|--patch) [<tree-ish>] [--] [<pathspec>...]
This is similar to the previous mode, but lets you use the
interactive interface to show the "diff" output and choose which
hunks to use in the result. See below for the description of
--patch option.

OPTIONS

-q, --quiet
Quiet, suppress feedback messages.

--progress, --no-progress
Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by
default when it is attached to a terminal, unless --quiet is
specified. This flag enables progress reporting even if not
attached to a terminal, regardless of --quiet.

-f, --force
When switching branches, proceed even if the index or the working
tree differs from HEAD, and even if there are untracked files in
the way. This is used to throw away local changes and any
untracked files or directories that are in the way.

When checking out paths from the index, do not fail upon unmerged
entries; instead, unmerged entries are ignored.

--ours, --theirs
When checking out paths from the index, check out stage #2 (ours)
or #3 (theirs) for unmerged paths.

Note that during git rebase and git pull --rebase, ours and
theirs may appear swapped; --ours gives the version from the
branch the changes are rebased onto, while --theirs gives the
version from the branch that holds your work that is being
rebased.

This is because rebase is used in a workflow that treats the
history at the remote as the shared canonical one, and treats the
work done on the branch you are rebasing as the third-party work
to be integrated, and you are temporarily assuming the role of
the keeper of the canonical history during the rebase. As the
keeper of the canonical history, you need to view the history
from the remote as ours (i.e. "our shared canonical history"),
while what you did on your side branch as theirs (i.e. "one
contributor's work on top of it").

-b <new-branch>
Create a new branch named <new-branch>, start it at
<start-point>, and check the resulting branch out; see git-
branch(1) for details.

-B <new-branch>
Creates the branch <new-branch>, start it at <start-point>; if it
already exists, then reset it to <start-point>. And then check
the resulting branch out. This is equivalent to running "git
branch" with "-f" followed by "git checkout" of that branch; see
git-branch(1) for details.

-t, --track[=(direct|inherit)]
When creating a new branch, set up "upstream" configuration. See
"--track" in git-branch(1) for details.

If no -b option is given, the name of the new branch will be
derived from the remote-tracking branch, by looking at the local
part of the refspec configured for the corresponding remote, and
then stripping the initial part up to the "*". This would tell us
to use hack as the local branch when branching off of origin/hack
(or remotes/origin/hack, or even refs/remotes/origin/hack). If
the given name has no slash, or the above guessing results in an
empty name, the guessing is aborted. You can explicitly give a
name with -b in such a case.

--no-track
Do not set up "upstream" configuration, even if the
branch.autoSetupMerge configuration variable is true.

--guess, --no-guess
If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch
in exactly one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name,
treat as equivalent to

$ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>

If the branch exists in multiple remotes and one of them is named
by the checkout.defaultRemote configuration variable, we'll use
that one for the purposes of disambiguation, even if the <branch>
isn't unique across all remotes. Set it to e.g.
checkout.defaultRemote=origin to always checkout remote branches
from there if <branch> is ambiguous but exists on the origin
remote. See also checkout.defaultRemote in git-config(1).

--guess is the default behavior. Use --no-guess to disable it.

The default behavior can be set via the checkout.guess
configuration variable.

-l
Create the new branch's reflog; see git-branch(1) for details.

-d, --detach
Rather than checking out a branch to work on it, check out a
commit for inspection and discardable experiments. This is the
default behavior of git checkout <commit> when <commit> is not a
branch name. See the "DETACHED HEAD" section below for details.

--orphan <new-branch>
Create a new unborn branch, named <new-branch>, started from
<start-point> and switch to it. The first commit made on this new
branch will have no parents and it will be the root of a new
history totally disconnected from all the other branches and
commits.

The index and the working tree are adjusted as if you had
previously run git checkout <start-point>. This allows you to
start a new history that records a set of paths similar to
<start-point> by easily running git commit -a to make the root
commit.

This can be useful when you want to publish the tree from a
commit without exposing its full history. You might want to do
this to publish an open source branch of a project whose current
tree is "clean", but whose full history contains proprietary or
otherwise encumbered bits of code.

If you want to start a disconnected history that records a set of
paths that is totally different from the one of <start-point>,
then you should clear the index and the working tree right after
creating the orphan branch by running git rm -rf . from the top
level of the working tree. Afterwards you will be ready to
prepare your new files, repopulating the working tree, by copying
them from elsewhere, extracting a tarball, etc.

--ignore-skip-worktree-bits
In sparse checkout mode, git checkout -- <paths> would update
only entries matched by <paths> and sparse patterns in
$GIT_DIR/info/sparse-checkout. This option ignores the sparse
patterns and adds back any files in <paths>.

-m, --merge
When switching branches, if you have local modifications to one
or more files that are different between the current branch and
the branch to which you are switching, the command refuses to
switch branches in order to preserve your modifications in
context. However, with this option, a three-way merge between the
current branch, your working tree contents, and the new branch is
done, and you will be on the new branch.

When a merge conflict happens, the index entries for conflicting
paths are left unmerged, and you need to resolve the conflicts
and mark the resolved paths with git add (or git rm if the merge
should result in deletion of the path).

When checking out paths from the index, this option lets you
recreate the conflicted merge in the specified paths. This option
cannot be used when checking out paths from a tree-ish.

When switching branches with --merge, staged changes may be lost.

--conflict=<style>
The same as --merge option above, but changes the way the
conflicting hunks are presented, overriding the
merge.conflictStyle configuration variable. Possible values are
"merge" (default), "diff3", and "zdiff3".

-p, --patch
Interactively select hunks in the difference between the
<tree-ish> (or the index, if unspecified) and the working tree.
The chosen hunks are then applied in reverse to the working tree
(and if a <tree-ish> was specified, the index).

This means that you can use git checkout -p to selectively
discard edits from your current working tree. See the
"Interactive Mode" section of git-add(1) to learn how to operate
the --patch mode.

Note that this option uses the no overlay mode by default (see
also --overlay), and currently doesn't support overlay mode.

--ignore-other-worktrees
git checkout refuses when the wanted branch is already checked
out or otherwise in use by another worktree. This option makes it
check the branch out anyway. In other words, the branch can be in
use by more than one worktree.

--overwrite-ignore, --no-overwrite-ignore
Silently overwrite ignored files when switching branches. This is
the default behavior. Use --no-overwrite-ignore to abort the
operation when the new branch contains ignored files.

--recurse-submodules, --no-recurse-submodules
Using --recurse-submodules will update the content of all active
submodules according to the commit recorded in the superproject.
If local modifications in a submodule would be overwritten the
checkout will fail unless -f is used. If nothing (or
--no-recurse-submodules) is used, submodules working trees will
not be updated. Just like git-submodule(1), this will detach HEAD
of the submodule.

--overlay, --no-overlay
In the default overlay mode, git checkout never removes files
from the index or the working tree. When specifying --no-overlay,
files that appear in the index and working tree, but not in
<tree-ish> are removed, to make them match <tree-ish> exactly.

--pathspec-from-file=<file>
Pathspec is passed in <file> instead of commandline args. If
<file> is exactly - then standard input is used. Pathspec
elements are separated by LF or CR/LF. Pathspec elements can be
quoted as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath
(see git-config(1)). See also --pathspec-file-nul and global
--literal-pathspecs.

--pathspec-file-nul
Only meaningful with --pathspec-from-file. Pathspec elements are
separated with NUL character and all other characters are taken
literally (including newlines and quotes).

<branch>
Branch to checkout; if it refers to a branch (i.e., a name that,
when prepended with "refs/heads/", is a valid ref), then that
branch is checked out. Otherwise, if it refers to a valid commit,
your HEAD becomes "detached" and you are no longer on any branch
(see below for details).

You can use the @{-N} syntax to refer to the N-th last
branch/commit checked out using "git checkout" operation. You may
also specify - which is synonymous to @{-1}.

As a special case, you may use A...B as a shortcut for the merge
base of A and B if there is exactly one merge base. You can leave
out at most one of A and B, in which case it defaults to HEAD.

<new-branch>
Name for the new branch.

<start-point>
The name of a commit at which to start the new branch; see git-
branch(1) for details. Defaults to HEAD.

As a special case, you may use "A...B" as a shortcut for the
merge base of A and B if there is exactly one merge base. You can
leave out at most one of A and B, in which case it defaults to
HEAD.

<tree-ish>
Tree to checkout from (when paths are given). If not specified,
the index will be used.

As a special case, you may use "A...B" as a shortcut for the
merge base of A and B if there is exactly one merge base. You can
leave out at most one of A and B, in which case it defaults to
HEAD.

--
Do not interpret any more arguments as options.

<pathspec>...
Limits the paths affected by the operation.

For more details, see the pathspec entry in gitglossary(7).

DETACHED HEAD

HEAD normally refers to a named branch (e.g. master). Meanwhile, each
branch refers to a specific commit. Let's look at a repo with three
commits, one of them tagged, and with branch master checked out:

HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
|
v
a---b---c branch 'master' (refers to commit 'c')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')

When a commit is created in this state, the branch is updated to
refer to the new commit. Specifically, git commit creates a new
commit d, whose parent is commit c, and then updates branch master to
refer to new commit d. HEAD still refers to branch master and so
indirectly now refers to commit d:

$ edit; git add; git commit

HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
|
v
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')

It is sometimes useful to be able to checkout a commit that is not at
the tip of any named branch, or even to create a new commit that is
not referenced by a named branch. Let's look at what happens when we
checkout commit b (here we show two ways this may be done):

$ git checkout v2.0 # or
$ git checkout master^^

HEAD (refers to commit 'b')
|
v
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')

Notice that regardless of which checkout command we use, HEAD now
refers directly to commit b. This is known as being in detached HEAD
state. It means simply that HEAD refers to a specific commit, as
opposed to referring to a named branch. Let's see what happens when
we create a commit:

$ edit; git add; git commit

HEAD (refers to commit 'e')
|
v
e
/
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')

There is now a new commit e, but it is referenced only by HEAD. We
can of course add yet another commit in this state:

$ edit; git add; git commit

HEAD (refers to commit 'f')
|
v
e---f
/
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')

In fact, we can perform all the normal Git operations. But, let's
look at what happens when we then checkout master:

$ git checkout master

HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
e---f |
/ v
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')

It is important to realize that at this point nothing refers to
commit f. Eventually commit f (and by extension commit e) will be
deleted by the routine Git garbage collection process, unless we
create a reference before that happens. If we have not yet moved away
from commit f, any of these will create a reference to it:

$ git checkout -b foo # or "git switch -c foo" (1)
$ git branch foo (2)
$ git tag foo (3)


1. creates a new branch foo,
which refers to commit f,
and then updates HEAD to
refer to branch foo. In
other words, we'll no
longer be in detached
HEAD state after this
command.
2. similarly creates a new
branch foo, which refers
to commit f, but leaves
HEAD detached.
3. creates a new tag foo,
which refers to commit f,
leaving HEAD detached.

If we have moved away from commit f, then we must first recover its
object name (typically by using git reflog), and then we can create a
reference to it. For example, to see the last two commits to which
HEAD referred, we can use either of these commands:

$ git reflog -2 HEAD # or
$ git log -g -2 HEAD

ARGUMENT DISAMBIGUATION

When there is only one argument given and it is not -- (e.g. git
checkout abc), and when the argument is both a valid <tree-ish> (e.g.
a branch abc exists) and a valid <pathspec> (e.g. a file or a
directory whose name is "abc" exists), Git would usually ask you to
disambiguate. Because checking out a branch is so common an
operation, however, git checkout abc takes "abc" as a <tree-ish> in
such a situation. Use git checkout -- <pathspec> if you want to
checkout these paths out of the index.

EXAMPLES

1. Paths
The following sequence checks out the master branch, reverts the
Makefile to two revisions back, deletes hello.c by mistake, and gets
it back from the index.

$ git checkout master (1)
$ git checkout master~2 Makefile (2)
$ rm -f hello.c
$ git checkout hello.c (3)


1. switch branch
2. take a file out of
another commit
3. restore hello.c from the
index

If you want to check out all C source files out of the index, you can
say

$ git checkout -- '*.c'

Note the quotes around *.c. The file hello.c will also be checked
out, even though it is no longer in the working tree, because the
file globbing is used to match entries in the index (not in the
working tree by the shell).

If you have an unfortunate branch that is named hello.c, this step
would be confused as an instruction to switch to that branch. You
should instead write:

$ git checkout -- hello.c

2. Merge
After working in the wrong branch, switching to the correct branch
would be done using:

$ git checkout mytopic

However, your "wrong" branch and correct mytopic branch may differ in
files that you have modified locally, in which case the above
checkout would fail like this:

$ git checkout mytopic
error: You have local changes to 'frotz'; not switching branches.

You can give the -m flag to the command, which would try a three-way
merge:

$ git checkout -m mytopic
Auto-merging frotz

After this three-way merge, the local modifications are not
registered in your index file, so git diff would show you what
changes you made since the tip of the new branch.

3. Merge conflict
When a merge conflict happens during switching branches with the -m
option, you would see something like this:

$ git checkout -m mytopic
Auto-merging frotz
ERROR: Merge conflict in frotz
fatal: merge program failed

At this point, git diff shows the changes cleanly merged as in the
previous example, as well as the changes in the conflicted files.
Edit and resolve the conflict and mark it resolved with git add as
usual:

$ edit frotz
$ git add frotz

CONFIGURATION

Everything below this line in this section is selectively included
from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as
what's found there:

checkout.defaultRemote
When you run git checkout <something> or git switch <something>
and only have one remote, it may implicitly fall back on checking
out and tracking e.g. origin/<something>. This stops working as
soon as you have more than one remote with a <something>
reference. This setting allows for setting the name of a
preferred remote that should always win when it comes to
disambiguation. The typical use-case is to set this to origin.

Currently this is used by git-switch(1) and git-checkout(1) when
git checkout <something> or git switch <something> will checkout
the <something> branch on another remote, and by git-worktree(1)
when git worktree add refers to a remote branch. This setting
might be used for other checkout-like commands or functionality
in the future.

checkout.guess
Provides the default value for the --guess or --no-guess option
in git checkout and git switch. See git-switch(1) and git-
checkout(1).

checkout.workers
The number of parallel workers to use when updating the working
tree. The default is one, i.e. sequential execution. If set to a
value less than one, Git will use as many workers as the number
of logical cores available. This setting and
checkout.thresholdForParallelism affect all commands that perform
checkout. E.g. checkout, clone, reset, sparse-checkout, etc.

Note: Parallel checkout usually delivers better performance for
repositories located on SSDs or over NFS. For repositories on
spinning disks and/or machines with a small number of cores, the
default sequential checkout often performs better. The size and
compression level of a repository might also influence how well
the parallel version performs.

checkout.thresholdForParallelism
When running parallel checkout with a small number of files, the
cost of subprocess spawning and inter-process communication might
outweigh the parallelization gains. This setting allows you to
define the minimum number of files for which parallel checkout
should be attempted. The default is 100.

SEE ALSO

git-switch(1), git-restore(1)

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-CHECKOUT(1)