Check Out

There are various ways to check out in SmartGit:

  • Main/Log window Double-click on a branch in the Branches view and confirm the Check Out dialog that comes up.
  • Main window On the project window, invoke Branch|Check Out from the menu. This will open a dialog containing a Log view, where you can select the commit to check out.
  • Log window On the Log window, select the commit to check out and then select Check Out from its context menu.

If you check out a remote branch, you can optionally create a new local branch (recommended) and set up branch tracking.

If you check out a local branch that tracks a remote branch, and the latter is ahead of the local branch by a couple of commits, you can decide whether you want to just check out the latest commit of the local branch, or to check out and let SmartGit do a fast-forward merge to the latest commit of the remote branch. For further information on merging, see Merge.

Checkout tasks

  • If you have local changes in your working tree, the Check Out might fail. In this case, SmartGit offers you to stash away the local changes before executing the actual Check Out command and re-apply the changes from the stash after executing the command. For further information on stashes, see Stashes.

  • If a .gitattributes file is present in your repository and its content differs between the checkout source commit (old commit) and the checkout target commit (new commit), SmartGit will invoke a thorough inspection of line endings present in your working tree: due to .gitattributes changes the line endings for certain files may have to be changed.

    Usually, line endings correction won’t be necessary and this part of the Check Out performs quickly (or you won’t even notice it). Certain changes to .gitattributes may affect many (or all files), though. In this case, line endings correction may require a significant amount of time.