# Creating a branch

So far we have been working directly on the `main` branch of our repository as by default a repository has one branch
named `main`. A **branch** is a separate version of the main repository. The `main` branch is considered as the stable
version of the code that you are working on. If you want to add a new feature or additions to your code, having a
separate branch to work on is considered good practice as it will retain a stable version of your code in the `main`
branch, while developing the new feature in a separate branch. The edits done in the feature branches will not show up
in the `main` branch until they are merged into the `main` branch.

```{figure} images/branch.png
---
name: fig-branch
scale: 80%
---
Representation of a `main` and feature branch. When creating a new branch off the `main` branch, the new feature branch will be a copy of the `main` branch at that point in time.
```

The figure above shows an example of how feature branches are used in development. In the example below, the `main`
repository contains 4 files. Developer 1 creates a feature branch `feature-1` from the `main` branch. They make changes
to file 1 and file 3 and merge these changes to the `main` branch. While developer 1 was working in the `feature-1`
branch, developer 2 also created a feature branch `feature-2` from the `main` branch. They worked on files 2 and 4 and
merged their changes back into the `main` branch. At the end of the process, the `main` branch contains all the changes
from the `feature-1` and `feature-2` branch. The feature branches created by the two separate developers show how
feature branches facilitate development from multiple developers concurrently.

```{figure} images/branch-feature.png
---
name: fig-branch-feature
---
Creation of feature branches and merging into `main`. Image is an adaptation of the image from [Prabhu Vingnesh Kimar Rajagopal.](https://digitalvarys.com/git-branch-and-its-operations/)
```