Useful Git Commands

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About it

Have you recently started using Git? This should give you the base commands you need to perform the most common actions in Git. If you find a command that is not here, or could be explained better, please don't hesitate in * Contributing. Cheers!

Table of contents

• Install git
• Setting up git
• Applying colour to git
• Initializing a repository in an existing directory
• Checking the status of your files
• Staging files
• Stashing files
• Committing files
• Branching and merging
• Resetting
• Git remote
• Git grep
• Git blame
• Git log
• Checking what you are committing
• Useful Commands
• Useful Alias
• Contributing

Git

Git is a distributed version control system, very easy to learn and supper fast!

Install Git

There are a few different ways to install git (from source or for Linux) but the purpose of this page is to focus on git commands, so I am going to assume you are installing git on a Mac.

To view other ways of installing it visit the Git official site

Click here to download and install Git

Setting up git

$ git config --global user.name "User Name"

$ git config --global user.email "email"

Applying colour to git

$ git config --global color.ui true

Initializing a repository in an existing directory

If you’re starting to track an existing project in Git, you need to go to the project’s directory and type:

$ git init

This creates a new subdirectory named .git that contains all of your necessary repository files — a Git repository skeleton. At this point, nothing in your project is tracked yet.

To start version-controlling existing files you should start by tracking those files and do an initial commit. To accomplish that you should start with a few $ git add that specifies the files you want to track followed by a commit.

$ git add <file>
$ git add README
$ git commit -m 'Initial project version'

Checking the status of your files

The main tool you use to determine which files are in which state is the $ git status command. If you run this command directly after a clone, you should see something like this:

$ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

If you add a new file to your project, and the file didn't exist before, when you run a $ git status you should see your untracked file like this:

$ git status
# On branch master
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#   README
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

Staging files

After initializing a git repository in the chosen directory, all files will now be tracked. Any changes made to any file will be shown after a $ git status as changes not staged for commit.

To stage changes for commit you need to add the file(s) - or in other words, stage file(s).

# Adding a file
$ git add filename

# Adding all files
$ git add -A

# Adding all files changes in a directory
$ git add .

# Choosing what changes to add (this will got through all your changes and you can 'Y' or 'N' the changes)
$ git add -p

Stashing files

Git stash is a very useful command, where git will 'hide' the changes on a dirty directory - but no worries you can re-apply them later. The command will save your local changes away and revert the working directory to match the HEAD commit.

# Stash local changes
$ git stash

# Stash local changes with a custom message
$ git stash save "this is your custom message"

# Re-apply the changes you saved in your latest stash
$ git stash apply

# Re-apply the changes you saved in a given stash number
$ git stash apply stash@{stash_number}

# Drops any stash by its number
$ git stash drop stash@{0}

# Apply the stash and then immediately drop it from your stack
$ git stash pop

# 'Release' a particular stash from your list of stashes
$ git stash pop stash@{stash_number}

# List all stashes
$ git stash list

# Show the latest stash changes
$ git stash show

# See diff details of a given stash number
$ git diff stash@{0}

Committing files

After adding/staging a file, the next step is to commit staged file(s)

# Commit staged file(s)
$ git commit -m 'commit message'

# Add file and commit
$ git commit filename -m 'commit message'

# Add file and commit staged file
$ git commit -am 'insert commit message'

# Amending a commit
$ git commit --amend 'new commit message' or no message to maintain previous message

# Squashing commits together
$ git rebase -i
This will give you an interface on your core editor:
# Commands:
#  p, pick = use commit
#  r, reword = use commit, but edit the commit message
#  e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending
#  s, squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit
#  f, fixup = like "squash", but discard this commit's log message
#  x, exec = run command (the rest of the line) using shell

# Squashing commits together using reset --soft
$ git reset --soft HEAD~number_of_commits
$ git commit
** WARNING: this will require force pushing commits, which is OK if this is on a branch before you push to master or create a Pull Request.

Branching and merging

# Creating a local branch
$ git checkout -b branchname

# Switching between 2 branches (in fact, this would work on terminal as well to switch between 2 directories - $ cd -)
$ git checkout -

# Pushing local branch to remote
$ git push -u origin branchname

# Deleting a local branch - this won't let you delete a branch that hasn't been merged yet
$ git branch -d branchname

# Deleting a local branch - this WILL delete a branch even if it hasn't been merged yet!
$ git branch -D branchname

# Remove any remote refs you have locally that have been removed from your remote (you can substitute <origin> to any remote branch)
$ git remote prune origin

# Viewing all branches, including local and remote branches
$ git branch -a

# Viewing all branches that have been merged into your current branch, including local and remote
$ git branch -a --merged

# Viewing all branches that haven't been merged into your current branch, including local and remote
$ git branch -a --no-merged

# Viewing local branches
$ git branch

# Viewing remote branches
$ git branch -r

# Rebase master branch into local branch
$ git rebase origin/master

# Pushing local branch after rebasing master into local branch
$ git push origin +branchname

Fetching and checking out remote branches

# This will fetch all the remote branches for you.
$ git fetch origin

# With the remote branches in hand, you now need to check out the branch you are interested in, giving you a local working copy:
$ git checkout -b test origin/test

# Deleting a remote branch
$ git branch -rd origin/branchname
$ git push origin --delete branchname  or  $ git push origin:branchname

Merging branch to trunk/master

# First checkout trunk/master
$ git checkout trunk/master

# Now merge branch to trunk/master
$ git merge branchname

# To cancel a merge
$ git merge --abort

Updating a local repository with changes from a Github repository

$ git pull origin master

Tracking existing branch

$ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/foo foo

Resetting

# Mixes your head with a give sha
# This lets you do things like split a commit
$ git reset --mixed [sha]

# Upstream master
$ git reset HEAD origin/master -- filename

# The version from the most recent commit
$ git reset HEAD -- filename

# The version before the most recent commit
$ git reset HEAD^ -- filename

# Move head to specific commit
$ git reset --hard sha

# Reset the staging area and the working directory to match the most recent commit. In addition to unstaging changes, the --hard flag tells Git to overwrite all changes in the working directory, too.
$ git reset --hard

Git remote

# Show where 'origin' is pointing to and also tracked branches
$ git remote show origin

# Show where 'origin' is pointing to
$ git remote -v

# Change the 'origin' remote's URL
$ git remote set-url origin https://github.com/user/repo.git

# Add a new 'origin'
# Usually use to 'rebase' from forks
$ git remote add [NAME] https://github.com/user/fork-repo.git

Git grep

# 'Searches' for parts of strings in a directory
$ git grep 'something'

# 'Searches' for parts of strings in a directory and the -n prints out the line numbers where git has found matches
$ git grep -n 'something'

# 'Searches' for parts of string in a context (some lines before and some after the grepped term)
$ git grep -C<number of lines> 'something'

# 'Searches' for parts of string and also shows lines BEFORE the grepped term
$ git grep -B<number of lines> 'something'

# 'Searches' for parts of string and also shows lines AFTER the grepped term
$ git grep -A<number of lines> 'something'

Git blame

# Show alteration history of a file with the name of the author
$ git blame [filename]

# Show alteration history of a file with the name of the author && SHA
$ git blame [filename] -l

Git log

# Show a list of all commits in a repository. This command shows everything about a commit, such as commit ID, author, date and commit message.
$ git log

# List of commits showing commit messages and changes
$ git log -p

# List of commits with the particular expression you are looking for
$ git log -S 'something'

# List of commits by author
$ git log --author 'Author Name'

# Show a list of commits in a repository in a more summarised way. This shows a shorter version of the commit ID and the commit message.
$ git log --oneline

# Show a list of commits in a repository since yesterday
$ git log --since=yesterday

# Shows log by author and searching for specific term inside the commit message
$ git log --grep "term" --author "name"

Checking what you are committing

# See all (non-staged) changes done to a local repo
$ git diff

# See all (staged) changes done to a local repo
$ git diff --cached

# Check what the changes between the files you've committed and the live repo
$ git diff --stat origin/master

Useful commands

# Check if a sha is in production
$ git tag --contains [sha]

# Number of commits by author
$ git shortlog -s --author 'Author Name'

# List of authors and commits to a repository sorted alphabetically
$ git shortlog -s -n

# List of commit comments by author
$ git shortlog -n --author 'Author Name'
# This also shows the total number of commits by the author

# Number of commits by contributors
$ git shortlog -s -n

# Undo local changes to a File
$ git checkout -- filename

# Shows more detailed info about a commit
$ git cat-file sha -p

# Show number of lines added and removed from a repository by an author since some time in the past.
$ git log --author="Author name" --pretty=tformat: --numstat --since=month | awk '{ add += $1; subs += $2; loc += $1 - $2 } END { printf "added lines: %s, removed lines: %s, total lines: %s\n", add, subs, loc }'

Useful alias

To add an alias simply open your .gitconfig file on your home directory and include the alias code

# Shows the log in a more consisted way with the graph for branching and merging
lg = log --color --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit

Contributing

1. Fork it!
2. Create your feature branch: git checkout -b my-new-feature
3. Commit your changes: git commit -m 'Add some feature'
4. Push to the branch: git push -u origin my-new-feature
5. Submit a pull request - cheers!