til/git/change-the-start-point-of-a-branch.md

Change The Start Point Of A Branch

More than a few times I have checked out a new branch against, say, develop when I instead meant to base it off qa. I've tried what felt like the obvious solution.

❯ git checkout qa
❯ git checkout -b new-branch
fatal: A branch named 'new-branch' already exists.

Git won't allow this. The fix I tend to go with is to delete the branch, move to my intended starting point, and check it out anew.

Here is another approach. The git checkout command offers the -B flag which will save me a step.

❯ git checkout -B new-branch
Switched to and reset branch 'new-branch'

Use this with caution. Any commits that have been applied to the subject branch will be reset (read: wiped out) in the process.

See man git-checkout for more details.