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!
- Useful Git Commands
- About it
- Table of contents
- Git
- Install Git
- Checking the status of your files
- Staging files
- Stashing files
- Committing files
- Branching and merging
- Fetching and checking out remote branches
- Merging branch to trunk/master
- Updating a local repository with changes from a Github repository
- Tracking existing branch
- Resetting
- Git remote
- Git grep
- Git blame
- Git log
- Checking what you are committing
- Useful commands
- Useful alias
- Contributing
Git is a distributed version control system, very easy to learn and supper fast!
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 Windows.
To view other ways of installing it visit the Git official site
Click here to download and install Git
$ git config --global user.name "User Name"
$ git config --global user.email "email"
$ git config --global color.ui true
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'
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)
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
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}
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.
# 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
# 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
# First checkout trunk/master
$ git checkout trunk/master
# Now merge branch to trunk/master
$ git merge branchname
# To cancel a merge
$ git merge --abort
$ git pull origin master
$ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/foo foo
# 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
# 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
# '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'
# 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
# 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"
# 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
# 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 }'
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
- Fork it!
- Create your feature branch:
git checkout -b my-new-feature
- Commit your changes:
git commit -m 'Add some feature'
- Push to the branch:
git push -u origin my-new-feature
- Submit a pull request - cheers!