Git Switch Vs Checkout

Pre-requisites

The prerequisites for learning about Git switch vs checkout can be a basic understanding of Version Control Systems, Branching, and Git. Before learning about the git bisect command, let us discuss them briefly.

A version control system is a tool in software development that tracks the changes in the code, documents, and other important information regarding a certain code base (or project), etc. Git is a version control system that tracks the changes in the code, documents, and other important information regarding a certain code base (or project), etc. Git is free and one of the most widely used version control systems. Apart from that, we must know the concepts of the git log command and the git status command as both of these commands will help us to know the exact scenario of the Git repository.

Introduction

To understand the topic i.e. Git switch vs checkout, let us take a scenario for more clarity.

Suppose you are working with a team of developers and you along with the team created a project and deployed it. Now you want to add new functionality to the developed application. One thing that you can do is that code your idea and append it to the deployed code. In this way, you may face some issues like failed compilation, inadequate response, etc. So, a better thing is to create a branch and then include our work in that branch. You can now test this branch completely before appending or pushing it to the deployed master branch.

Now as we can see we need to move from one branch to another in the development process a lot of times. So, moving or switching between the branches can be done by two Git commands: git checkout and git switch. Let us learn about these commands briefly before going into their differences.

Git Switch Branch

The git switch command is one of the latest commands being added to the list of Git commands. The git switch command was added in Git version 2.23.

It can be seen as an alternative to its ancestor git checkout command (that we will be learning about in the next section). Before the introduction of the git switch command, we have only one command i.e. git checkout for switching between the various branches.

In a more formal term, we can say that the git switch command lets us switch the HEAD of our current branch to some specified branch. Suppose we are working on the master branch and we have another branch named development`. So, to switch to the development branch, we can use the following command:

Let us take an example to understand the working of the git switch command with another command. Suppose we want to check out a file from another branch.

The situation is that we have two dev branches namely: dev-A, and dev-B. Apart from this you also have a test.txt file in both the dev-A, and dev-B branches. Now if you want to copy or check out the test.txt file from dev-B to the branch dev-A, how can we do so with the help of the git switch command and git restore command?

Steps:

1. Switch to the branch to the branch where we want to check out the desired file using the command:

1. Name the file that we want to checkout using along with the git restore command:

In the above last step, we need to add the file name as well as the destination branch name along with the --source flag.

1. In the last step, we only need to perform the commit and push operation.

Git Checkout

The Git checkout is one of the most important commands used in Git. It is used to switch between various versions of any target entity. The Git checkout command mainly works with three distinct entities i.e. files, commits, and branches. The git checkout command lets us switch between the branches. The git checkout command is usually used with the git branch command. It helps in easy switching and creating a branch if we combine both these commands. The combined command becomes git checkout -b <new-branch>. We can perform a lot of operations using the Git checkout command, some of the operations that can be performed using the Git checkout command can be switching to a specific branch, creating a new branch, checking out a remote branch, and many more.

Suppose we are working on the master branch and we have another branch named development. So, to switch to the development branch, we can use the following command:

We can even combine the checkout and the branch command to create a branch and then directly move to the newly created branch. In normal cases, we need to first create a branch using the create branch command and then move to the created branch using the Git checkout command. So, simply we can use the combined following command:

In many scenarios where we want to check out some file(s) from different branches or we want to update some specific file(s) and directory(es) of our current branch with files and directories of another branch, then Git provides us several ways to do so. This method is quite helpful as we do not need to perform merging, we can directly checkout files. In a situation where a branch is not ready to be merged and we want to check out some files then we can use this Git feature.

Suppose we have two dev branches namely: dev-A, and dev-B. Apart from this you also have a test.txt file in both the dev-A, and dev-B branches. Now if you want to copy or check out the test.txt file from dev-B to the branch dev-A.

Now in such scenarios, we can use the git checkout command along with the path of the file that has to be copied to the current branch. The overall command for the same is:

We can even get multiple files by specifying the names of each of the files using the above command. We can even copy an entire folder (directory) using the above command.

Finally, we can check the status of the current branch using the git status command.

What is the Difference between Git Switch and Checkout Commands?

Let us now learn about some of the differences between the git checkout and git switch commands.

The git switch command is a fairly new command that can be used to perform switching between the branches, creating a new branch, and switching between the branches. The git checkout on the other hand is an old command using which we can create a branch and then move into the branch. The git checkout command also lets us switch to the branches that were recently active.

The git checkout command can also be used to undo and restore the changes of a commit. On the other hand, we cannot perform such operations using the git switch command.

Which One Should You Use? Git Checkout or Git Switch?

As we have discussed above the git switch command is a newer command and can be used as an alternative to the git checkout command.

Now, apart from the common operations of the git switch and git checkout commands, the git checkout command also provides us some add-on features like:

• It lets us create and switch to the newly created branch using the -b flag.
• It can be used to undo and restore the changes of a Git commit.
• It also allows us to copy file(s) directly to another commit or another branch into the tree without even navigating to the branch.

But the new addition command i.e. git switch command can be combined with numerous commands to achieve greater functionality. So, we should switch ourselves to the git switch command.