git clone -b phase0-helloworld https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/appengine-php-guestbook.git helloworld

[Suraj Kumar]

am new to google cloud while trying to clone this repo from github why we are including this -b phase0  what it is doing ?  can anyone please explain me ?

[Jordan (Cloud Platform Support)]

When you supply the Git command option '-b' it is telling Git to clone a specific branch of the code (in your case the 'phase0-helloworld' branch) and not the HEAD main branch code. You can see the different branches of a Git repository in the branches tab.