Git: Create Branch from Previous Commit

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Categories: TIL

Sometimes you need to create a new branch based on an older state of the repository – say, something unrelated broke and the fix will take some time.

Additionally to the new branch name, you can also add the SHA key to branch off from a very specific point in your git history.

Code snippets

Words in angle brackets <> will be replaced by your custom values.

# Create new branch
# using the specific SHA...
git branch <branchname> <sha-of-commit>
# ... or the relational symbolic reference
git branch <branchname> HEAD~3

# Or, create and directly checkout the new branch
# with any of the above ways
git checkout -b <branchname> <sha-of-commit or HEAD~3>

How to find the SHA key?

On Gitlab, Github& Co., find the list of commits and copy the commit SHA.

In your terminal, see the list of commits using git log.

What is a SHA?

SHA stands for Secure Hash Algorithm and is a cryptographic function that returns a hexadecimal has value. I don't have a recommended article on this topic, so here's the duckduckgo link: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sha1&t=ffab&ia=web.

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