Git Cheatsheet

A cheatsheet for our favourite scm git.

Ratan Kulshreshtha published on April 06, 2018

4 min, 616 words

Categories: Cheatsheet

Tags: git

Let's go through this tldr format git cheatsheet.

The Three States

Git Directory - The .git directory is where Git stores the metadata and object database for the repository
Working Directory - A copy of one version of the git project, taken from compressed database in the .git directory
Staging Area/Index - File that stores information about what will next be committed into the git repository

git config --global user.name "[name]" - Sets the name you want attached to your commit transactions
git config --global user.email "[email address]" - Sets the email you want attached to your commit transactions
git config --global color.ui auto - Enables helpful colorizations of command line input

git init [project-name] Creates a new local repository with the specified name
git clone [url] - Downloads a project and its entire version history

git status - Lists all new or modified files to be committed
git diff - Shows file differences not yet staged
git add [file] - Snapshots the file in preparation for versioning
git diff --staged - Shows file differences between staging and the last file version
git reset [file] - Unstages the file, but preserves its contents
git commit -m "[descriptive message]" - Records the file snapshots permanently in version history

git branch - Lists all local branches in the current repository
git branch [branch-name] - Creates a new branch
git checkout [branch-name] - Switches to the specified branch and updates the working directory
git merge [branch] - Combines the specified branch's history into the current branch
git branch -d [branch-name] - Deletes the specified branch
git remote add [remote-name] [url] - Add a new remote git repository as a short name
git remote -v - Lists all remote git repositories

git rm [file] - Deletes the file from the working directory and stages the deletion
git rm --cached [file] - Removes the file from version control but preserves the file locally
git mv [file-original] [file-renamed] - Changes the file name and prepares it for commit

A text file named .gitignore suppresses accidental versioning of files and paths matching the specified patterns
```
*.log
build/ 
temp-*
```
git ls-files --other --ignored --exclude-standard - Lists all ignored files in this project

git log - Lists version history for the current branch
git log --follow [file] - Lists version history for a file, including renames
git diff [first-branch]...[second-branch] - Shows content differences between two branches
git show [commit] - Outputs metadata and content changes of the specified commit

git reset [commit] - Undoes all commits after [commit], preserving changes locally
git reset --hard [commit] - Discards all history and changes back to the specified commit

git fetch [bookmark] [branch] - Downloads all history from the repository bookmark, optionally specifying branch
git merge [bookmark]/[branch] - Combines bookmark's branch into current local branches
git push [alias] [branch] - Uploads all local branch commits to GitHub
git push [alias] :[branch] - Deletes remote branch
git pull - Downloads bookmark history and incorporates changes
git pull --rebase - Downloads bookmark history and incorporates your changes on top of remote changes
git rebase --interactive --autosquash HEAD~N - Squash N last commits
git cherry-pick -n <sha> - Cherry-pick a commit
git revert -n <sha> - Revert a commit

git blame [file] - Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file
git bisect - Use binary search to find the commit that introduced a bug