My Useful Git Commands

August 3rd, 2015

If, like me, you are lost in git command’s world, here my ultimate cheatsheet I need and I often forget, c’est la vie, c’est la vie…

Stashing your Work

So there you are, working on a new feature, modifying files in the working directory and/or index and you find out you need to fix a bug on a different branch. You can’t just switch to a different branch and lose all your work. Source: http://www.gitguys.com/topics/temporarily-stashing-your-work/

Add Files to the Index

We first need to add the new files to the index. No need to add updates to the index since that paths were already in the index: Git will notice that the working directory version is newer than the index and will stash them.

$ git add NEW_FILE

Stash Time

Now we’re ready for the stashing:

$ git stash
Saved working directory and index state WIP on master: 8d8b865 Initial commit
HEAD is now at 8d8b865 Initial commit

Work on Another Branch or Two

Now we can do anything we want, such as git checkout other-branch, make modifications, fix bugs, and commit the fix to that branch.

Stash pop and Working Directory is Back

When we’re ready to continue where we left off, above, we simply type git stash pop and our “stashed” working directory is back where it was when we had typed git stash:

$ git stash pop

Diff a previous commit

Use git show $COMMIT, It’ll show you the log message for the commit, and the diff of that particular commit.

How to clone git repository with specific revision/changeset ?

$ git clone $URL
$ git reset --hard $SHA1

To again go back to the most recent commit

$ git checkout master

How do I revert all local changes in Git

$ git checkout .

To create a branch

…and switch to it at the same time, you can run the git checkout command with the -b switch:

$ git checkout -b iss53

Switched to a new branch “iss53”

This is shorthand for:

$ git branch iss53 // Create a branch iss53
$ git checkout iss53 // Switch to branch iss53

Changing an older commit message

You can use interactive rebase, then force push to change the commit history.

On the command line, navigate to the repository that contains the commit you want to amend. Use the git rebase -i HEAD~n command to display a list of the last n commits in your default text editor. Or git rebase -i 7c91cce^ to display a list of commits since 7c91cce commit.

Replace pick with reword before each commit message you want to change.
Save and close the commit list file.
In each resulting commit file, type the new commit message, save the file, and close it.
Force-push the amended commits.

$ git rebase -i HEAD~3
pick d575f9c ENHANCEMENT: Closes #73, add SANB aditional contact
reword caa46b3 FEATURE: Closes #183, add one-signal Push provider support
pick 7ef0ace Update release notes

...
$ git push --force

Source: https://help.github.com/articles/changing-a-commit-message/

If you omit --force option git should raise following error:

To git@bitbucket.org:username/test1.git
 ! [rejected]        dev -> dev (non-fast-forward)
error: failed to push some refs to 'git@bitbucket.org:username/test1.git'
hint: Updates were rejected because the tip of your current branch is behind
hint: its remote counterpart. Integrate the remote changes (e.g.
hint: 'git pull ...') before pushing again.
hint: See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details.

Maybe git pull is not what you expect, if you did it read this post to understand what happens and how to revert it.

Amend your last commit

If you ever find that you accidentally left something out of your last commit, be it a file, an extra change to a file that you just committed or a wrong comment, don’t worry. It can easily be fixed.

Commit has not been pushed online

$ git commit --amend -m "New commit message"

or if you don’t want to re-type the commit message (you’ll prompted to edit and save it):

$ git commit --amend

…however, this can make multi-line commit messages or small corrections more cumbersome to enter. Make sure you don’t have any working copy changes before doing this or they can get committed too.

Source: https://nathanhoad.net/git-amend-your-last-commit

Commit has been already pushed to your remote branch

If you’ve already pushed your commit up to your remote branch

Follow the steps above to amend the commit.
then you’ll need to force push the commit with

$ git push <remote> <branch> --force

How to modify a specified commit ?

Assume you have a history that looks like this:

$ git log --graph --oneline
* b42d293 Commit3
* e8adec4 Commit2
* faaf19f Commit1

I know that I can modify HEAD commit with git commit --amend, but how can I modify Commit2, given that it is not the HEAD commit?

Interactive rebase with --autosquash is something useful when you need to fixup previous commits deeper in the history. It’s especially handy when you have more than one commit you need to edit.

From the man git-rebase page:

--autosquash
When the commit log message begins with “squash! …” (or “fixup! …”), and there is a commit whose title begins with the same …, automatically modify the todo list of rebase -i so that the commit marked for squashing comes right after the commit to be modified

If you have changes that you want to amend to Commit2 then commit your changes using:

$ git commit -m "fixup! e8adec4"

Then initiate an interactive rebase on the commit before

$ git rebase e8adec4^ -i --autosquash

Your editor will open with the commits already correctly ordered

pick e8adec4 Commit2
fixup 54e1a99 fixup! Commit2
pick b42d293 Commit3

All you need to do is save and exit

Undo a git rebase

Actually, rebase saves your starting point to ORIG_HEAD so this is usually as simple as:

% git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD

Source: stackoverflow - Undo a git rebase

How to have git log show filenames ?

$ git log --stat

Mark Release Points with Tags

Lightweight Tags

To create a lightweight tag, this is basically the commit checksum stored in a file – no other information is kept, use following command:

$ git tag rel-1.2.7

Git-Basics-Tagging

By default, the git push command doesn’t transfer tags to remote servers. You will have to explicitly push tags to a shared server after you have created them. This process is just like sharing remote branches – you can run git push origin [tagname].

$ git push origin rel-1.2.7

Checkout a Specific Tag

$ git clone will give you the whole repository.

After the clone, you can list the tags with $ git tag -l and then checkout a specific tag:

$ git checkout tags/<tag_name>

Even better, checkout and create a branch (otherwise you will be on a branch named after the revision number of tag):

$ git checkout tags/<tag_name> -b <branch_name>

Revert a file to a specific revision using Git?

Assuming the hash of the commit you want is c5f567:

$ git checkout c5f567 -- file1/to/restore file2/to/restore

Rename a tag

Rename a tag old to new:

$ git tag new old
$ git tag -d old
$ git push origin :refs/tags/old
$ git push --tags

The colon in the push command removes the tag from the remote repository. If you don’t do this, git will create the old tag on your machine when you pull.

Finally, make sure that the other users remove the deleted tag. Please tell them(co-workers) to run the following command:

git pull --prune --tags

Source

Automatically convert line endings correctly for your platform

In git-config, set core.autocrlf to true to make git automatically convert line endings correctly for your platform.

$ git config core.autocrlf true

Undo a local commit

To restore everything back to the way it was prior to the last commit, we need to reset to the commit before HEAD:

git reset --hard HEAD^     # use --hard if you don't care about keeping the changes

git reset --soft HEAD^     # use --soft if you want to keep your changes

You tell Git to move the HEAD pointer back one commit.

If you use --soft this not only leaves your files alone, it even leaves your index alone. When you do git status, you’ll see that the same files are in the index as before. In fact, right after this command, you could do git commit and you’d be redoing the same commit you just had.

You also can undo last n commits using git reset --soft HEAD~n

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/git-undo-merge-how-to-revert-the-last-merge-commit-in-git/

Undo a public commit

Revert commit

If you have already made your commits public, you will want to create a new commit which will “revert” the changes you made in your previous commit (current HEAD).

git revert HEAD

Your changes will now be reverted and ready for you to commit:

git commit -m 'restoring the file I removed by accident'
git log
    commit 102: restoring the file I removed by accident
    commit 101: removing a file we dont need
    commit 100: adding a file that we need

Reverting a commit means to create a new commit that undoes all changes that were made in the bad commit. Just like above, the bad commit remains there, but it no longer affects the current master and any future commits on top of it.

Rewrite history

If you want to rewrite the history, I recommend to read the post Git HowTo: revert a commit already pushed to a remote repository from Christoph Rüegg

git rewrite history vs revert commit
$ git rebase -i 56424e4^
Replace ‘pick’ by ‘remove’ on commit line to be removed
$ git rebase --continue
$ git push -f

Undo ‘git add’ before commit

You can undo git add before commit with

git reset <file>

Which will remove it from the current index without changing anything else.

To unstage all due changes, use also reset command withour any file name.

git reset

Source:

Copy working-tree (without .git files)

Checkout from remote repository

git checkout --work-tree=tmp/ --git-dir="https://github.com/meumobi/ConferenceTracker.git"

Checkout files of current git repository

path-to-repository$ git checkout --work-tree=../tmp/Employee checkout HEAD -- .

Source: http://stackoverflow.com/a/16493707/4982169

Git clone including submodules

git clone --recurse-submodules

Note that --recurse-submodules and --recursive are equivalent aliases. Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3796927/how-to-git-clone-including-submodules

Rollback to an old Git commit

you just want your working copy to reflect a specific commit? Use git checkout and the commit hash. Use git checkout -b to checkout into a branch, or git checkout . to checkout into the current branch.

$ git checkout 1a9b1267d1c2d66b8ff668ee79a21fc261008d68 -b rel-05-apr
Switched to a new branch 'rel-05-apr'
$ git branch
  master
* rel-05-apr
$

Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2007662/rollback-to-an-old-git-commit-in-a-public-repo

Rename branch (locally and remotely)

git branch -m old_branch new_branch         # Rename branch locally    
git push origin :old_branch                 # Delete the old branch    
git push --set-upstream origin new_branch   # Push the new branch, set local branch to track the new remote

How to release a patch for a previous version

It seems that there is a concept of a “support” branch in git flow. This is used to add a hotfix to an earlier release

Source: handle hotfix of an earlier release

git checkout 6.0
git checkout -b support/6.x
git checkout -b hotfix/6.0.1

… make your fix, then:

git checkout support/6.x
git merge hotfix/6.0.1
git branch -d hotfix/6.0.1
git push origin --delete hotfix/6.0.1 #If you need to remove remotely
git tag 6.0.1

How do we release a patch for a previous version https://github.com/GitTools/GitVersion/issues/128

Support branches are not really covered in GitFlow, but are essential if you need to maintain multiple major versions at the same time. You could use support branches for supporting minor releases as well. https://gitversion.readthedocs.io/en/latest/git-branching-strategies/gitflow-examples/

Delete tag locally and remotely

If you want to delete local tag,

$ git tag -d v0.0.1

and remote,

$ git push origin --delete v0.0.1

Download a specific tag

$ git clone will give you the whole repository.

After the clone, you can list the tags with $ git tag -l and then checkout a specific tag:

$ git checkout tags/<tag_name>

Even better, checkout and create a branch (otherwise you will be on a branch named after the revision number of tag):

$ git checkout tags/<tag_name> -b <branch_name>

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/792027/4982169

Checkout a specific revision

$ git checkout <sha1>

Working on wrong branch - how to copy changes to existing topic branch

$ git stash
$ git checkout branch123
$ git stash apply

Source

Overriding remote repository with mine local

If your remote repository contains a bad version, and you have the copy of a good version locally. Running git push –force command you’ll replace everything that’s on the remote repository with your local:

$ git push --force

List only the names of files changed on commit

% git show --name-only f92e6d3                              ...
    refactor: update app default title

src/index.html
%

Merge pull request or branch into master

If your repo is https://github.com/johnsmith/hello-world.git

Step 0: Setup remote

First check the list of your remotes by $ git remote -v
If you don’t have the https://github.com/johnsmith/hello-world.git remote in the above command’s output, you would add it by $ git remote add xyz https://github.com/johnsmith/hello-world.git

Usually xyz is origin.

Now you can fetch the contents of that remote by $ git fetch xyz
Check the branch list by $ git branch -a

Step 1: Check out a new branch and test the changes

From your project repository, check out a new branch and test the changes.

$ git checkout -b my_copy_random_branch xyz/random_branch

The local branch my_copy_random_branch would be tracking the random_branch branch of your remote.

Step 2: From your project repo, bring in the changes and test

$ git log ..master	# if you're curious
$ git merge master

Once all of the conflicts have been resolved and the commits are made, it’s good practice to double check that none of the conflicts resulted in broken code. This step is particularly important if someone was modifying the same area of code as your PR.

Step 3: Merge the changes and update on GitHub

Now, we can switch back to master to merge this PR into the main master branch.

$ git checkout master
$ git merge --no-ff my_copy_random_branch
$ git push origin master

If you prefer to squash all commits form branch into a single one use:

$ git merge --squash my_copy_random_branch
$ git commit

Source

Pull requests are merged using the --no-ff option, except for pull requests with squashed or rebased commits, which are merged using the fast-forward option.

Step 4: Delete branch locally and remotely

After merge if you want to delete local branch,

$ git branch -d my_copy_random_branch

and remote,

$ git push origin -d xyz/random_branch

Source:

Undo a Git merge that hasn’t been pushed yet

If merge has resulted in conflicts. git merge --abort will abort the merge process and try to reconstruct the pre-merge state.

Else see Undo a local commit section.

Fetch all git branches

When you clone a repository all the information of the branches is actually downloaded but the branches are hidden. With the command

$ git branch -a

you can show all the branches of the repository, and with the command

$ git checkout -b branchname origin/branchname

you can then “download” them manually one at a time.

Sources:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10312521/how-to-fetch-all-git-branches
https://gist.github.com/tamtamchik/2869690

How to merge a specific commit in Git

git cherry-pick apply the change introduced by an existing commit.

Do not forget to read bdonlan’s answer about the consequence of cherry-picking in this post: “Pull all commits from a branch, push specified commits to another”.

$ git cherry-pick 0539748

How to get back to the latest commit after checking out a previous commit?

I sometimes check out some previous version of the code to examine or test. I have seen instructions on what to do if I wish to modify previous commits – but suppose I make no changes. After I’ve done e.g. git checkout HEAD^, how do I get back to the tip of the branch?

git checkout branchname You can also use git reflog to see what other commits your HEAD (or any other ref) has pointed to in the past.

if you only ran git checkout or something else to move your HEAD once, you can also do

git checkout - to switch back to wherever it was before the last checkout. This was motivated by the analogy to the shell idiom cd - to go back to whatever working directory one was previously in.

Source

Push existing repo to a new

Create a new repo at github.
Clone the repo old repo to your local machine.
git remote rename origin upstream
git remote add origin URL_TO_GITHUB_REPO
git push origin master

Now you can work with it just like any other github repo. To pull in patches from upstream, simply run git pull upstream master && git push origin master.

Source

Update list of remotes

$ git fetch $ git remote prune origin

Contribute to an Open Source project on github

https://www.sammyk.me/how-to-contribute-to-an-open-source-project-on-github

How to amend several commits in Git to change author

First set your git author settings

git config --global user.name "John Doe"
git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com

Then to reset the author for all commits after the given SHA

git rebase -i YOUR_SHA -x "git commit --amend --reset-author -CHEAD"

Or if you only want to change the author for the last N commits:

$ git rebase -i HEAD~N -x "git commit --amend --reset-author -CHEAD"

Source

Stashing only staged files

It’s possible w/ double stash. But you can achieve similar logic using --patch option

$ git stash push --patch   # since 2.14.6

And git will ask you for each change in your files to add or not into stash. You just answer y or n.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/44824475/4982169kou

Get Git config

To get the remote URL:

% git remote -v
origin	https://github.com/devizem/Eventure.git (fetch)
origin	https://github.com/devizem/Eventure.git (push)

% git config -l                                                                              
credential.helper=osxkeychain
user.name=vdias38
user.email=victor.dias@meumobi.com
credential.https://vdias38@bitbucket.org/filmstacker/filmstacker-app-ionic4.git=true
core.repositoryformatversion=0
core.filemode=true
core.bare=false
core.logallrefupdates=true
core.ignorecase=true
core.precomposeunicode=true
core.hookspath=.husky
remote.origin.url=https://github.com/devizem/Eventure.git
remote.origin.fetch=+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
branch.main.remote=origin
branch.main.merge=refs/heads/main
branch.feat/master-detail-ux-ui-design.remote=origin
branch.feat/master-detail-ux-ui-design.merge=refs/heads/feat/master-detail-ux-ui-design

My Useful Git Commands

Stashing your Work

Add Files to the Index

Stash Time

Work on Another Branch or Two

Stash pop and Working Directory is Back

Diff a previous commit

How to clone git repository with specific revision/changeset ?

How do I revert all local changes in Git

To create a branch

Changing an older commit message

Amend your last commit

Commit has not been pushed online

Commit has been already pushed to your remote branch

How to modify a specified commit ?

Undo a git rebase

How to have git log show filenames ?

Mark Release Points with Tags

Lightweight Tags

Sharing Tags

Checkout a Specific Tag

Revert a file to a specific revision using Git?

Rename a tag

Automatically convert line endings correctly for your platform

Undo a local commit

Undo a public commit

Revert commit

Rewrite history

Undo ‘git add’ before commit

Copy working-tree (without .git files)

Git clone including submodules

Rollback to an old Git commit

Rename branch (locally and remotely)

How to release a patch for a previous version

Delete tag locally and remotely

Download a specific tag

Checkout a specific revision

Working on wrong branch - how to copy changes to existing topic branch

Overriding remote repository with mine local

List only the names of files changed on commit

Merge pull request or branch into master

Step 0: Setup remote

Step 1: Check out a new branch and test the changes

Step 2: From your project repo, bring in the changes and test

Step 3: Merge the changes and update on GitHub

Step 4: Delete branch locally and remotely

Undo a Git merge that hasn’t been pushed yet

Fetch all git branches

How to merge a specific commit in Git

How to get back to the latest commit after checking out a previous commit?

Push existing repo to a new

Update list of remotes

Contribute to an Open Source project on github

How to amend several commits in Git to change author

Stashing only staged files

Get Git config

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Victor Dias