Listing branches is essential for navigating Git repositories, understanding project structure, and managing multiple development streams in collaborative workflows. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, I regularly list branches across multiple repositories to track feature development, review contributor work, and manage release branches. From my expertise, the most comprehensive approach is to use git branch with various flags for local and remote branch information. This method provides complete visibility into repository structure, branch status, and tracking relationships for effective branch management.

Merging branches is fundamental for integrating feature work, bug fixes, and collaborative contributions into the main codebase in Git workflows. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, I’ve merged thousands of branches from contributors worldwide, managing feature integration and release cycles across multiple repositories. From my expertise, the most standard approach is to use git merge command after switching to the target branch. This method creates merge commits that preserve the history of both branches, enabling clear tracking of feature integration and easy rollback if needed.