Salvatore Cordiano

Introducing git switch and git restore

When you work with Git using the command line, you know the git checkout command for sure.

git checkout command is the overused command, and it does many things. We mainly use git checkout to switch or create new branches and restore files in the working tree.

Let’s see some examples of usages.

# switch to an existing branch
$ git checkout <existing_branch>

# create and switch to a new branch
$ git checkout -b <new_branch>

# restore filename.ext from the index
git checkout filename.ext

These two completely different purposes could lead to confusion, so Git developers have taken this into account. In fact, Git 2.23 release introduces the git switch and git restore commands. It is clearer how to switch/create branches and restore files with two different commands.

Disclaimer: git switch and git restore are still marked as experimental on the docs. Their behavior may change.

But let’s go deeper with both commands.

git switch in action

# switch to an existing branch
$ git switch <existing_branch>

# create and switch to a new branch
$ git switch -c <new_branch>

# switch to the previous branch
$ git switch -

git restore in action

git restore is used to revert non-committed changes:

# discard the local changes of filename1.ext and filename2.ext
git restore filename1.ext filename2.ext

# discard all local changes
git restore .

The restore command will take the contents from HEAD by default. You can change this behavior, as shown in the following examples.

# restore filename.ext from the commit with hash 049c0bb432
git restore --source 049c0bb432 filename.ext

# restore filename.ext from 2 commits before 
# the current tip of the master branch
git restore --source master~2 filename.ext

You can restore the index and the working tree using the --worktree option.

$ git restore --worktree filename.ext

The last command does two things:

That’s all Folks!

· git