What's the difference among "git fetch && git checkout" versus "git checkout" only?
To chime in here since I have to use Bitbucket daily for multiple projects and multiple branches I will give you my recommendation.
If you checkout from Bitbucket, i.e. create a branch, then you should be ok using the commands that they have provided as you pasted in your example. However, since it is likely that after the initial checkout you will be switching branches, creating branches and your local will get out of sync I recommend the following using your terminal. :
git checkout developor whatever branch you needgit fetch && git pulli.e. fetch all branches and latest changes as well as pull in all changes from the branch you are on.
Yes this does seem like duplicate work but working with Bitbucket I will say that this is the safest and sanest way to ensure that you have the latest from the branch that you are working on.
That being said, you should always create branches and never push directly to your develop or master branches.
So let's say that you are on develop branch and you have done the above by checking out the branch and have fetched and pulled the latest you would then create a branch off of that main branch using standard git checkout -b my-feature-branch
Example of what we do at my shop:
git checkout developgit fetch && git pullgit checkout -b feature/JIRA_ISSUE_NUMBER-update-layout-for-this-page
Now you have checked out the develop branch, pulled down all the latest changes and remote branches and created a feature branch from that develop branch.
Hope this helps.
git fetch pulls references to the remote branches that are being created on (in this case) BItbucket.
git checkout moves your current directory into a specific branch or a specific commit (depending the parameter).
What’s going on here? When you create a branch on your bitbucket, they provide you with that command because:
1- The branch was created on the REMOTE repository. Your local copy of the repository doesn’t have that new branch yet. That’s what the git fetch command is used for.
2- Bitbucket assumes that, since you just created that new branch, you will work on it immediately and you need to tell that to your local repository. That’s what the git checkout command is used for
That is not the only way to achieve it. You could, for example, aviod that git fetch command by using:
git checkout -b {new_branch_name} && git pull origin {new_branch_name}
That’s not the most practical way, but probably will give you some better idea of how those commands work.
To be specific to your question " when doing a checkout from a branch in bitbucket they provide the command as: git fetch && git checkout develop ". This is because develop branch being created at cloud or remote , will not be available at you local machine until and unless you fetch the updates from remote.
Thus, to switch or checkout to develop branch , you first need to fetch all the remote updates to be aware of existence of develop branch. Once you do a fetch, your local reppo will be aware of the new branch being created at remote; and when you do a checkout to develop, it will setup a new local branch to track its remote couterpart.