git.md

Git-Cheat-Sheet

A cheat sheet for uncommon Git commands

Git - The Three Trees

• Git always has three trees at the minimum:
  • Working Tree - this tree has all the untracked and tracked files in your repository, this is also where modifications first appear.
  • Index Tree - this is the proposed commit tree, where you add all the changes that you want to commit. If a file reaches this tree, it's automatically tracked by git. It is also called the staging area.
  • HEAD Tree - this tree points to your current branch, which in turn points to a commit. So the HEAD transitively points to the commit that the current branch is pointing. The commit that is pointed by the HEAD will be the parent of your next commit.
• Git always compares these three trees to determine the changes in your files. The git status command will show modifications in the working tree that are not in the index.
• Once you stage the changes in the working tree, they get added to the index tree, which will make the working and index tree the same, but not the HEAD tree.
• Running git status again will show which files are in the index. Once you commit the changes in staging area, the commit is added to the branch which has all the changes you made.
• At newest commit's parent will be the previous commit that the HEAD is pointing to.
• The branch then will move it's pointer to the latest commit, along with the HEAD.
• Now HEAD points to the branch that points to the latest commit. This makes the working tree, index tree, and HEAD tree equivalent.
• Running git status will now show that there are no changes.

Important Notes For Some Commands:

• git checkout will move the HEAD itself to a specified commit or branch.
• git reset will not move the HEAD but the branch that the HEAD is pointing to.

Configuration

Command	Description
git config --global user.name "foo"	Set user name
git config --global user.email "foo@example.com"	Set user email

Branches

Branches are used to "branch off" from a commit. Branches are essentially pointers to the "tip commit" of the current branch. What makes branches special is that if you create another commit to branch, the branch will automatically move it's pointer to that new commit.

Command	Description
git branch	List all the branches
git branch -r	List all remote branches
git branch --merged	List all merged branches
git branch <branch-name>	Create a new branch
git branch -d <branch-name>	Deletes a branch
git branch --set-upstream-to repo/branch	Set an upstream branch in the current repository
git checkout -b <new-branch>	Create and switch to a branch using HEAD as the base, you can also use git switch -c
git checkout -b <new-branch> <source>	Create and switch to a branch using the specified source as the base

Manipulating the HEAD

HEAD is a pointer to a commit or a branch, we can move it to a source (commit, branch, tag, or HEAD itself) using the git checkout command. Moving the HEAD also will also update the contents of Working and Index Tree. Moving to a commit other than a tip commit of a branch will result in a state called detached head, this is normal when you're just inspecting the content of a specific commit.

Command	Description
git checkout <source>	Move the head to a source, updating the content of working and index tree

Resetting Files in the Working Tree

git checkout also has other uses other than moving the HEAD which is resetting specific files in the Working Tree based on a source by providing paths. This is different than regular checkout because it doesn't move the HEAD and just affects the Working Tree.

Command	Description
git checkout <source> <files>	Reset files in the working tree based on the source

Manipulating Branches

As previously mentioned, a branch is nothing more than a pointer to a commit that moves when a new commit is added. Being a pointer, we can change where it is pointing to using the git reset command. Unlike git checkout, which moves the HEAD tree itself, git reset moves the current branch itself to a source. Remember that the HEAD, when attached, also points to the current branch, so the effect is as if the HEAD also moved. The source can either be a branch, a commit, the HEAD, or a tag. Be very careful when using this because resetting a branch to a previous commit also effectively drops the commits after that previous commit. Reset can also cascade it's effects to the working tree and index tree.

git reset flags that can be used to specify which trees should be affected

• --soft - only affects the HEAD
• --mixed - only affects the HEAD and the staging/indexing area, this is the default when neither of the three flags is provided
• --hard- affects the HEAD, staging/indexing area, and the working tree

Command	Description
git reset --soft <source>	Reset changes only in the HEAD tree based on the source
git reset <source> or git reset --mixed <source>	Reset changes in the index and HEAD tree based on the source
git reset --hard <source>	Reset changes in working, index, and HEAD tree based on the source

Resetting Files in the Index/Staging Tree

git reset has other use besides moving the branch, it can also reset files in the index tree using a source when provided with paths. Unlike the regular git reset, however, it does not move the branch to the source, it merely affects the files in the index tree. This use of reset can only use the --mixed flag because it wouldn't make sense to use the other flags otherwise.

Command	Description
git reset <source> <files> or git reset --mixed <source> <files>	Reset the files in the index tree based on the source

Merging

Merging is the act of applying the changes of a <source-branch> into a destination branch (which is the current branch). Merging can either be a 3-way merge (AKA merge commit) or fast-forwarded merge, git will choose one of the two depending on the situation.

3-way merge creates a special commit called a merge commit. A merge commit is special because it has two parents commits which are the tip commits of the two branches being merged. If there are no conflicts between the two commits, a merge commit will be made on the current branch.

before merge

         master (destination)
           |
           v
 <- *a <- *b <- *e
           ^
            \
             <- *c <- *d
                       ^
                       |
                    feature (source)

after merge

                         master (destination)
                           |
                           v
 <- *a <- *b <- *e <----- *f (merge commit)
           ^             /
            \           v
             <- *c <- *d
                       ^
                       |
                    feature (source)

fast-forward merge is used when the destination branch has no other commits after the commit where the source branch is branched off of. Git will take advantage of that by just moving pointer of the destination branch to the commit where the source branch is pointing to.

before merge

         master (destination)
           |
           v
 <- *a <- *b (no more commit after commit b, fast forward will be used when merging the feature branch)
           ^
            \
             <- *c <- *d
                       ^
                       |
                    feature (source)

after merge

 <- *a <- *b        master (destination, fast forwarded)
           ^           |
            \          v
             <- *c <- *d
                       ^
                       |
                    feature (source)

There are cases against both of types, fast forward looks cleaner but information about the git history is lost because of the fact that there will be no information about where the merge has happened due to the lack of a merge commit. The --no-ff flag will disable fast forward merges even if they're possible to do.

Command	Description
git merge <source-branch>	Merge source into current branch
git merge <source-branch> <destination-branch	Merge source into destination
git merge --no-ff <source-branch>	Merge source into current branch but don't use fast forward even if possible

Pulling and Fetching

Pulling and fetching are used to download commits and files from remote repositories. Even though the two are similar, they have different use-cases. git fetch is the safer of the two because it only download the content from the remote repository into your local fetched content but not update your local branches so it has no effect on local development work. Git is able to do this because isolates fetched remote content from local content.

git pull on the other hand also updates your local branches. Pull is actually composed of two actions, a git fetch and a git merge (or git rebase if --rebase flag is provided). Using the bare git pull command will target the current branch, fetch it's content from the remote version of the branch, then merge remote branch into the local branch. The merge can either be a 3-way merge or a fast-forward merge depending on the situation. The --rebase flag can provided to use a rebase instead of a merge after fetching, in this case, the local branch will be rebased to the remote branch.

Command	Description
get fetch	Fetches all content of origin (the default when no remote is provided) remote repository
get fetch <remote>	Fetches all content of the specified repository
get fetch <remote> <branch>	Fetches all content of specified remote branch repositories
get fetch --all	Fetches all content of every remote repositories into the local repository
get pull	Fetch the current branch from the remote repository and merge it into the local version
get pull <remote>	Fetch the current branch from the specified remote repository and merge it into the local version
get pull <remote> <branch>	Fetch the specified branch from the specified remote repository and merge it into the current local branch
get pull --rebase	Fetch the current branch from the remote repository and the local version to the remote version
git pull --rebase --prune	Get latest, rebase any changes not checked in and delete branches that no longer exist

Staging Files

Staging is the act of preparing changes that should be committed and files to be tracked. Once a file is staged, git will automatically track it's changes by compare the file in the staging/index tree and the one from the working tree. Once changes are mod to tracked files, changes to them need to be readded using git add before you can commit them.

Command	Description
git add file.txt	Stage file/changes to a file
git add .	Stage all file/changes to files
git add --patch file.txt	Stage some but not all changes in a file

Unstaging Files

Sometimes you need to remove file(s) from the staging/index tree. A common use-case for this is when adding a new entry to a .gitignore file; once a file is staged, before adding it to .gitignore, you need to unstage it before before git to actually start ignoring it.

Command	Description
git rm --cached <files>	Remove the file(s) from the index
git rm <files>	Remove the file(s) from the index and working directory, but will warn you if you have unsaved changes
git rm --force <files>	Force remove the file(s) from the index and working directory and disregarding any changes

Committing

Committing is the act of saving the staged changes into a "checkpoint" that you can go back to if you made a mistake in your current Working Tree.

Commits, in git, are like singly linked list because they have a reference to a commit before them called a "parent commit". The very first commit doesn't have a parent commit so it points to a null.

<- *a <- *b <- *c

In this visual, a, b, c are commits pointing to their respective parent commit.

Command	Description
git commit -m "New message"	Commit the staged changes with a message
git commit --amend -m "New message"	Update the last commit with the staged changes and a new message
git commit --amend --no-edit	Update the last commit with the staged changes but don't edit the message
git commit --fixup 5720fdf -m "New message"	Merge into the specified commit

Cleaning the Working Tree

Command	Description
git clean -f|--force -d	Recursively remove untracked files from the working tree
git clean -f|--force -d -x	Recursively remove untracked and ignored files from the working tree

Rebasing

Rebasing is the act of reapplying the commits on your branch to a new parent commit (usually the tip commit of a branch).

Command	Description
git rebase <base-commit>	Rebase the current branch to a new base commit, can also be a branch name
git rebase --interactive [origin/main]	Rebase a PR (git pull first)
git rebase --interactive 5720fdf	Rebase to a particular commit
git rebase --interactive --root 5720fdf	Rebase to the root commit
git rebase --continue	Continue an interactive rebase
git rebase --abort	Cancel an interactive rebase

Reverting Changes

git revert is a safe undo operation that creates a new commit (also called a revert commit) that is the inverse of the commit being undone. This is the better way of reverting changes because it doesn't delete commits and modify the history of the branch, it instead appends to the history by making the undo operating also a commit.

Before revert:

a <- b <- c

After revert: (git revert b)

a <- b <- c <- d (inverse of b)

Command	Description
git revert 5720fdf	Revert a commit

Cherry-Picking Commits

Cherry-picking is the act of selecting a specific commit to be appened to the current branch. This is powerful but can also be a dangerous feature. It can used to quickly applying a commit fixing a bug to the current branch.

Before cherry pick:

        hotfix
          |
          V
a <- b <- c (master branch)
     ^
       \ x <- y <- z (current branch)

After cherry pick:

master
        hotfix
          |
          V
a <- b <- c  (master branch)
     ^
       \ x <- y <- z <- c (current branch) // after command: git cherry-pick c
                        ^
                        |
                        applied the hotfix to the current branch

Command	Description
git cherry-pick 5720fdf	Append the commit to the current branch

To Rebase or To Merge

There has a been discussion among git users as to which approach is better. The common advise is to never rebase anything branch that is public, public meaning there is more than one developer working on the branch. As for private branches, do what you prefer.

Compare

Command	Description
git diff	See difference between working tree and HEAD tree
git diff HEAD HEAD~2	See difference between the current commit and two previous commits
git diff main other	See difference between two branches

View

Command	Description
git log	See commit list
git log --patch	See commit list and line changes
git log --decorate --graph --oneline	See commit visualization
git log --grep foo	See commits with foo in the message
git show HEAD	Show the current commit
git show HEAD^ or git show HEAD~1	Show the previous commit
git show HEAD^^ or git show HEAD~2	Show the commit going back two commits
git show main	Show the last commit in a branch
git show 5720fdf	Show named commit
git blame file.txt	See who changed each line and when

Stash

Stashes are used temporarily store your (staged and unstaged) changes so that you can a clean working tree and work on something else. Stashes are stack based and as such use push and pop operations.

Command	Description
git stash push -m "Message"	Stash changes
git stash push -m "Message" <files...>	Stash changes but only from on specified files
git stash list	List stashes
git stash list stash@{0}	Show information about the first stash
git stash --include-untracked/-u	Stash changes including new (untracked/not git added) files
git stash --keep-index	Stash staged changes, but don't remove them from staging area
git stash show.txt	Show stash summary for file
git stash apply	Moved last stash to working area
git stash apply stash@{0}	Moved named stash to working area
git stash apply --index	Apply and stage the last stash
git stash apply --index stash@{0}	Apply and stage the named stash
git stash drop	Delete the last stash
git stash drop stash@{0}	Delete the named stash
git stash pop	Apply and delete the top most stash (combination of apply and drop)
git stash clear	Delete all the stash
git stash --patch	Interactively choose which portion of the modified changes do you want to stash
git stash branch <stash branch name>	Stash changes and create a new branch from it

Tags

Tags are kind of similar to branches, both are used to point to a commit. Unlike branches, however, tags are immutable, you can't change the commit it's pointing to. Tags are useuful

Command	Description
git tag	List all tags
git tag -a|--annotate 0.0.1 -m|--message "Message"	Create a tag
git tag -d|--delete 0.0.1	Delete a tag
git push --tags	Push tags to remote repository
git checkout <tag-annotation>	Checkout to the specified tag

Remote

Command	Description
git remote -v	List remote repositories
git remote show <remote>	Show remote repository details
git remote add <remote> <url>	Add remote upstream repository

Submodules

• Submodules are a way to incorporate a git repository as a subdirectory in your repository.
• Git knows which are submodules in your repo.
• Submodules are added to your commit but are not tracked by git. The content inside are not added to the commit.
• When you add a submodule to your repository using submodule add, files are not pulled by default.

Command	Description
git clone --recurse-submodules <url> [name]	Clone a repository, download it's contents, as well as the submodules inside it
git submodule add <url> [name]	Add a submodule to your repository, adds the submodule to the .gitmodules file which git tracks
git submodule status	Check status of all added submodules
git submodule sync	Syncs the submodule if there are any changes to the upstream repo such as URL changes
git submodule init	Initialize the git configuration file with the added submodules
git submodule update	Downloads the content of the submodule
git submodule update --init [path to sm]	Initalize the config file first then download the contents, if path to submodule is not specified, applies to all submodule
git submodule update --recursive [path to sm]	Download content of the submodule as well as the content of the submodules inside them, if path to submodule is not specified, applies to all submodule
git submodule update --init --recursive [path to sm]	Initialize the config file, download recursively, if path to submodule is not specified, applies to all submodule
git submodule update --remote [path to sm]	Pull the updates in remote tracking branches (assumes master branch is tracking branch), if path to submodule is not specified, applies to all submodule
git pull --recurse-submodules	Does agit pull then runs submodule update --recursive right after
git push --recurse-submodules check	Does agit push to your repository and submodules, the check option makes the the push fail if push on submodules fail
git push --recurse-submodules on-demand	Does agit push to your inside the submodule folders first then into the main repository, will not continue pushing the main if one push in a submodule fails
git config --local submodule.<submodule-name>.branch <tracking branch>	Set which branch to track in a submodule locally, not tracked by git
git config --local -f .gitmodules submodule.<submodule-name>.branch <tracking branch>	Set which branch to track in a submodule locally and add reflect the change to .gitmodules file so other it can be tracked by git
git submodule update --remote --merge [path to sm]	Fetch the updates of the submodule then merge, applies to all submodule if no path is specified
git submodule update --remote --rebase [path to sm]	Fetch the updates of the submodule then rebase, applies to all submodule if no path is specified

NOTE:

• When using git submodule update --recursive to fetch updates from remote tracking branch, it best to add --init flag to be on the safe side as the newest commit might have added a new submodule which is needed to be initialized.

• You can treat submodules as their own repositories, you don't have to use the submodule commands, just go inside the submodule folders and manage them there.

• Pull submodules

  1. git submodule sync
  2. git submodule init
  3. git submodule update

• Change branch

  1. cd /submodule
  2. git fetch origin <branch-name>
  3. git checkout <branch-name>
  4. cd /

• Additional Sources

  • Github Git Cheat Sheet
  • Git Visual Cheat Sheet
  • Git Rebase In-Depth
  • Git Flow
  • Git Merge