Table of Contents

Resources

• My Github specific cheatsheet
• Other Cheatsheets
  • Flavio Copes: Git Cheat Sheet
  • devhints.io/git-tricks
  • Good one-liner cheatsheet (orga.cat)
  • Another good cheatsheet (shortcutfoo)
  • cheat.sh/git
• git ready - Simple, easy to understand, tips at a time
• gitignore templates
  • You can pull one of these in via the CLI, with gitignore NPM package: npx gitignore python
• .gitconfig - handy git bash aliases
• agis/git-style-guide
• Zak Laughton - Three ways to time travel in Git to undo destructive mistakes
• Git History (pomber/git-history)
  • Timeline / slideshow view of a single file's Git history
    • Just replace github.com with github.githistory.xyz
  • There is also a VSCode extension
  • And a CLI!
    • npx git-file-history path/to/file.ext
• Git Command Explorer

Often used commands cheat table

Most of the above commands are covered more in-depth in subsections below.

Note: git gui and gitk commands depend on the corresponding programs being installed (git-gui and gitk, respectively), which normally are bundled with the installation of git, but might not be on your system.

Get commit ___ # of commits ago

HEAD~1 = second to last commit

You can change 1 to how many commits back you need to look

For example, to diff between the last commit and the one before that:

git diff HEAD HEAD~1

Get the last commit SHA hash, or priors

## Full SHA
git rev-parse HEAD
## Short SHA
git rev-parse --short HEAD

## 2nd to last SHA
git rev-parse HEAD~1

Relevant S/O: https://stackoverflow.com/q/949314

Meta cheatsheet - actually setting up git / git configuration

📘 Docs: "Getting Started - First-Time Git Setup"

• Start from scratch (create empty repo in current folder): git init
• Set committer name and email
  • git config --global user.name "Alan Turing"
  • git config --global user.email "aturing@example.com"
• Checking installed version
  • git --version
• Check installed path
  • git --exec-path
• If you are getting auth issues ("logon failed", etc.), there could be a few reasons (especially if you are using 2FA):
  • your version of git is probably out of date
    • For example, on Windows, a standard combo is Git Credential Manager for Windows + Git for Windows. There is a known issue with the credential manager and older versions of GFW.
  • Windows credentials got "unset" as the cred provider, or something glitched with it
    • Try git config --global credential.helper manager AND git config --system credential.helper manager to reset Windows Credentials as the provider, then retry your operation, and if necessary, relogin
      • Note: This is no longer wincred!
      • See below about how to verify this setting took hold
    • You can use git config --list --{global || system} to check settings (see this)
• Checking your full git config
  • git config --list will show all, from all levels (system, global, and local)
  • To view just one level, include it as a flag:
    • git config --list --global
  • You can use git config --get to view specific key-value pairs
  • Check contents of ~/.gitconfig
• Checking the user config object
  • You can use the RegEx option to view the user config key-value pairs: git config --get-regexp 'user\..+'
• Bulk ignoring commits for git blame
  • Commit and use a .git-blame-ignore-revs file (will be supported on GitHub's web UI soon)

Signing Your Commits / Creating Verified Commits

To sign your commits, there are multiple options, but the most popular are SSH or GPG. Unless you are already familiar with GPG, SSH is going to be the easier option for most users.

GitHub has great docs on configuring git to sign commits.

Dealing with Linkage

Adding a named remote

git remote add {name} [REMOTE_ORIGIN_URL]

Hint: You probably want to fetch after adding a remote. E.g. git remote add steve-contrib [URL] && git fetch steve-contrib

Remotes are flexible too:

• You can mix-and-match providers. E.g., your local repo can have both GitHub and Azure as a remotes
• You can even use local directories as remotes

Renaming a named remote

git remote rename {current_remote_name} {new_remote_name}

Hooking an existing local repo to a remote origin

(example - created git repo from cmd instead of github.com gui, now want to link up to existing Github repo)

1. Add already existing (but empty) github URL as remote repo and set as remote
   • git remote add origin [REMOTE_ORIGIN_URL]
2. Verify that it is linked
   • git remote -v
3. Now push up
   • git push origin main

Setting upstream (for forks)

This is really the same steps as adding a new remote origin:

git remote add [NAME_FOR_UPSTREAM] [REMOTE_UPSTREAM_URL]

Making sure your fork is up to date before making a PR

1. Make sure you have fresh data on upstream
   • git fetch upstream
2. Merge the fresh upstream main, into:
   • Your feature branch
     • git merge upstream/main
   • Your main branch
     • git checkout main && git merge upstream/main

Here is an advanced version that will fetch upstream main, merge into local main, and then merge into feature you are on, without switching branches. (as long as it can fast-forward) (only works if you are not on main currently):

git fetch upstream main:main && git merge main

Or (works regardless if you are on main or not currently):

git pull upstream main:main && git merge main

details

Change the link to remote

(for example, if you change the repo name on Github, or fork a repo and want to set origin to your new fork.)

1. First check list of remotes
   • git remote -v
2. Then remove the one you want to
   • git remote rm [NAME_OF_REMOTE||Example:Origin]
3. Double check that it was removed
   • git remote -v
4. Add new link
   • git remote add [NAME_OF_REMOTE||Example:Origin] [REMOTE_URL]

Branch Linkage

• Show how local branches are linked up to origin (e.g. showing tracking links)
  • git branch -vv
• List only remote branches:
  • git branch -r
    • or:
  • git ls-remote --heads origin
• Fetch (and switch to) remote branch that does not exist locally (yet)
  • git checkout --track origin/[REMOTE_BRANCH]
• Link a local branch to a remote TRACKING branch, that DOES NOT EXIST YET - set upstream (very common annoyance)
  • git push --set-upstream origin [LOCAL_BRANCH_NAME]:[NEW_REMOTE_BRANCH_NAME]
    • Or, even shorter
  • git push -u origin [LOCAL_BRANCH_NAME]:[NEW_REMOTE_BRANCH_NAME]
    • Or, even shorter (assuming same names)
  • git push -u origin [NEW_REMOTE_BRANCH_NAME]
• Link a local branch to a remote TRACKING branch that ALREADY exist
  • Different branch (already exists):
    • git branch -u origin/[TRACKING_BRANCH] [LOCAL_BRANCH]
  • Different branch (does not already exist)
    • git branch --track [LOCAL_BRANCH] origin/[TRACKING_BRANCH]
      • Or
    • git checkout [TRACKING_BRANCH] (notice did not use origin/ before it)
  • Current branch:
    • git branch --set-upstream-to origin/[TRACKING_BRANCH]
      • Or
    • git branch -u origin/[TRACKING_BRANCH]
• Push all local branches up to origin, regardless if they exist on origin or not yet
  • git push origin --all
    • Or
  • git push origin --all -u
    • Use the -u flag to set-upstream, which makes pulling from branches later easy
• UNLINK a branch that is tracking remote
  • git branch --unset-upstream

Good S/O answer about upstream. And this

In git push, when you only specify one branch name, instead of both remote and local, git assumes the branch names are the same!!! See notes under linking a local branch to a remote that does not yet exist.

Branches

Miscellaneous Branch Stuff

• Push to origin
  • Current branch
    • git push
  • Another branch
    • git push origin {branch}
  • All branches
    • git push origin --all
    • See above notes under "branch linkage"
• Merge branches without switching to them! (Only for fast-forward merges, use with caution) (Details)
  • Merge local into local
    • git fetch . {localBranchA}:{localBranchToMergeAInto}
  • Merge remote branch into local branch
    • git fetch origin {remoteBranch}:{localBranchToMergeInto}
      • Or:
    • git fetch . origin/{remoteBranch}:{localBranchToMergeInto}
  • Practical example: merge origin:main into local:main, and then merge that into yours, all without checking out!
    • git fetch origin main:main && git merge main
  • Extended example: merge origin main into local main, merge main into current branch feature, then merge current branch feature into local main, then push local main back up to origin.
    • Steps:
      • git fetch origin main:main && git merge main
      • git fetch . feature:main
      • git push origin main
    • This is basically the full update cycle for an org where main is source of truth
    • As one line:
      • git fetch origin main:main && git merge main && git fetch . feature:main && git push origin main

Get commits between branches

It's important to note that you can pass HEAD instead of {branchA}, if you just want to compare against the current branch you are on.

• Full git log / list commits different between branches
  • git log {branchA}..{branchB}
• Short version
  • git log --oneline {branchA}..{branchB}
• Just the count (number of commits different between branches)
  • git rev-list --count {branchA}..origin/main
• Just the behind commit count
  • git rev-list --count {AHEAD_REF} --not {BEHIND_REF}
    • e.g., how many commits feature is behind main: git rev-list --count HEAD --not origin/main
  • git rev-list --count {BEHIND_REF}..{AHEAD_REF}
    • e.g., how many commits feature is behind main: git rev-list --count HEAD..origin/main

Counting commits between branches

The easiest way to count commits between branches is with rev-list --count:

git rev-list --count {REF_A}..{REF_B}

You can get different results by swapping the refs and/or using triple-dot comparisons instead of double-dot.

• git rev-list --count {BEHIND_REF}..{AHEAD_REF}
  • e.g., how many commits feature is behind main: git rev-list --count HEAD..origin/main

You can also use the --not argument with rev-list:

# Just the behind commit count
git rev-list --count {AHEAD_REF} --not {BEHIND_REF}

Get the current branch (name)

Couple of options:

git symbolic-ref --short HEAD

Or:

git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD

Note: Neither of these options actually captures the name as a variable or does anything with it. If you wanted to use the branch name with another command, you would need to use piping / redirection / variable capture.

My notes on Bash variable capturing and redirection are here.

View all untracked files, not just dir names

git status -u

Add all untracked files to .gitignore file

git ls-files --others --exclude-standard >> .gitignore

Viewing Changes / Diffing

Order of References When Comparing

When comparing references with git diff or other git tools, and given a "base" reference and something that has diverged from the base reference that you want to inspect (such as a feature-branch that is ahead), you want to pass the diverged thing of interest last.

For example, if you are trying to see how branch feature-a has introduced changes on-top of branch main that it was based off, you could use git diff main..feature-a.

Git Comparisons - Triple Dot vs Double Dot

Triple-dot vs double-dot comparisons are a bit confusing in git, especially since the context matters - the implications are different when used with log vs diff (and, in fact, are almost reversed):

• log
  • Double dot (e.g. git log A..B):
    • Shows you only commits that B has that A doesn't
    • Useful when you are only interested in work done on B and don't care about behind changes
  • Triple dot (e.g. git log A...B):
    • Shows you both commits that B has that A doesn't, plus those in A that are not in B (aka behind)
    • Omits commits shared by both (same as double dot)
    • Useful for a more comprehensive look - e.g., ahead vs behind
• diff
  • Double dot (e.g. git diff A..B):
    • This is actually the same as just using git diff A B - the .. is implied by default
    • Shows differences between the two tips, without any special consideration for common ancestor / point of divergence
  • Triple dot (e.g. git diff A...B):
    • Shows difference starting at point of common ancestor (or, put another way, since divergence)
    • Answers the question "how has B changed since branching from A"

Further reading: this StackOverflow for git log and this StackOverflow for git diff

Get summary of lines changed by file

• git diff [version A] [OPT Version B] --stat

Get just summary of total lines changed, etc.

• git diff [version A] [OPT Version B] --stat | grep '^\s*.*files\schanged.*$'

Get a list of changed files (filenames)

• During pre-commit (staged files)
  • git diff --cached --name-only --diff-filter=ACMRTUXB
    • You can modify the filters to change which files show up
• During post-commit / find the files changed in the very last commit
  • With truly only names (credit):
    • git diff --name-only HEAD HEAD~1
    • You can combine with diff-filter: git diff --name-only --diff-filter=ACMRTUXB HEAD HEAD~1
  • To see operations for each file (modified, deleted, etc.)
    • git diff --name-status HEAD HEAD~1
  • Without using diff (for example, if there is only one commit in the repo):
    • git show HEAD --name-only --format=%b
    • Note that there will be spacing around the filenames

To pipe filenames from Git that might contains spaces, you need to take some extra steps - use the -z with diff to get null terminators, and then use -0 or --null with xargs, to tell it that input items are demarcated by null termination characters.

Different Diff Targets and Views

• Get just ahead differences between a given branch and another:
  • git diff {BEHIND_BRANCH}...{AHEAD_BRANCH}
• To see how many commits behind vs ahead
  • git rev-list --left-right --count {BRANCH_A}...{BRANCH_B}
    • Output will look like 14 3, where {BRANCH_B} is 14 commits behind {BRANCH_A} and 3 commits behind
    • Explanation

Exclude a file from a diff

• git diff [OTHER] . ":(exclude)[FILEPATH_TO_EXCLUDE]"
• Sample:
  • git diff 7cc297d5baf2e305b709fcf93e3fe93284fb18e1 --stat -- . ":(exclude)package-lock.json"

Better Diffs for Text-Based Files

The bare-bones git diff command works well for code, but often is almost unusable when trying to view the differences between revisions of a text-based / prose file, like in Markdown documents.

Aside from using a different diff'ing tool, their are some options for git diff that can vastly improve the text diff viewing experience:

💡 If you are looking for the shortest command with the biggest impact, it might be git diff --color-words="{REGEX}"

Example: git diff --word-diff-regex="\w+"

• These commands are functionally equivalent
  • git diff --color-words
  • git diff --word-diff=color
• You can also customize the pattern for the word-based diff views:
  • git diff --word-diff-regex="\w+"
  • You might want to combine this with the color mode, so either:
    • git diff --color-words="\w+"
      • Or...
    • git diff --word-diff-regex="\w+" --color-words

Better Diffs for Refactoring

One of my (many) complaints about the out-of-the-box git diff experience is that it is pretty bad when it comes to showing refactoring changes. For example, if you are trying to review someone's pull request, where they have just moved a bunch of code around without changing it, a git diff (including GitHub's PR diff view) will show all the code as "changed", even if all they did was copy and paste code from one file into another.

Blame, on the other hand, is much better at following code around as it moves within or between files, and one individual (David Szotten) even provides a helpful blog post on how to use blame for better diffs.

Here is the command they came up with:

git blame -s -w -C main..HEAD -- {FILE_PATH} |egrep --color=always '^[^\^]|^' |less -R

Diff Tools and Software

• diffr
• google/diff-match-patch
• difftastic
• kdiff3

Comparing File Similarity

# This is pretty good, but drops files that are identical
git diff --no-index --ignore-all-space --numstat {FILE_A} {FILE_B}

Amend the last commit (!!! - Danger - REWRITING HISTORY - !!!)

• For if you just want to change the message
  • git commit --amend -m "my new commit message to replace old"
• For if you forgot to add files / stage (stage first with add before running)
  • git commit --amend
• Same as above, but without interactive confirmation prompt to change message
  • git commit --amend --no-edit

Removing a file that was added in the last commit?

• git rm {file} and then git commit --amend like normal

Inspecting / Browsing files

In general, if you want to temporarily view file(s) at a point in time other than what you are currently looking at, git show is the main command to utilize.

git show {ref}:{path}

Cherry-Picking / Selective Git Merging

cherry pick commit(s) from another branch to add to current

• git cherry-pick [COMMIT_HASH]
  • Use the --no-commit option if you want to manually merge changes, and/or combine multiple cherry-picks into one commit
• git cherry-pick A..B
  • Cherry picks a range of commits, from A to B, where A is older than B
  • rebase --onto might be a preferred alternative

git cherry-pick --edit -x {SHA}

This cherry-picks a commit, appends the original SHA to the commit message, and stops to let you edit the message

If you want to edit the content / code of the commit, use --no-commit, then edit the staged content before actually committing the change

Merge up to a specific commit / Cherry-pick multiple with shared history

• git merge [COMMIT_FROM_OTHER_BRANCH_HASH]
  • This is the automatic version of cherry-picking commits manually from where a branch diverged, up to the point you want
  • Very cool feature; just pass in the hash of the last commit on the other branch!
  • Unlike cherry-pick, this is going to require shared history, just like regular merging
  • Relevant S/O

Cherry-pick, but for specific files

This is rather complicated, especially if you are trying to preserve history... in many cases, you are better off using the "grab files" approach (e.g. checkout, see further down below).

In the case that you really want to preserve history, you basically only have two options:

• Manually find all the commits that affected the file and cherry-pick with them, removing the changes for other files as you go
  • You can use git cherry-pick -n to stage but not commit
• Or, create a diff patch based on the target commit(s), and then git apply them
  • This S/O answer shows how to do it
    1. git show {SHA} -- {filename(s)} | git apply -
    2. git add {filename(s)}
    3. git commit -c {SHA}

Grab files from another branch (or commit) and merge into yours, without branch merging

This is basically like copying a file from a git ref to your local working directory, without having to cherry-pick commits and/or merge branches.

Keywords: Checkout files, copy files, restore files

• For specific files / copy files:
  • git checkout {branchOrSHA} -- {filename(s)}
    • This supports directories as well (and expansion / globs)
  • Interactively:
    • git checkout -p {branchOrSHA} -- {filename(s)}
    • git checkout -p {branchOrSHA}
• For everything (all files on branch or commit):
  • git checkout {branch} -- .

For complex reasons these methods will automatically stage the files that are brought in. There is a workaround, but the syntax is harder to remember.

Cherry-Picking From Stash

Cherry-picking or selective file merging can be done with stashes the same way it is done with branches or commits, as stashes actually have a normal reference / pointer / whatever you want to call it.

To reference a stash, you use stash@{STASH_NUMBER}.

Therefore, here is an example of how you could apply the changes from a single file in a stash, essentially coping the file out of the stash without actually applying or popping the full stash:

git checkout stash@{0} -- my_file.txt

If you want to apply the changes, without completely replacing:

git diff --no-color HEAD...stash@{0} -- {filename(s)} | git apply -

# Or

git show --patch --no-color stash@{0} -- {filename(s)} | git apply -

If you want to see what is in the stash, you could use something like git diff --stat HEAD...stash@{0}

Selective Git Staging / Interactive

A neat tip is that you don't always have to stage an entire file - you can add individual lines! This is great to remember when maybe you need to comment out something that breaks your local build, but needs to stay in the code base for someone else at the moment.

The easiest way to do this is with your IDE. In VSCode, all you have to do is select the lines you want to stage, then open the command palette (CTRL + P) and select "Git: Stage Selected Ranges".

From the CLI, you can do this by running git add --patch {filename}. Details. You could alternatively run git add -i and then select patch (details).

Undoing or Revising in Git

Resource: Gitlab - numerous undo possibilities in git.

Reverting a Commit

If you want to revert a commit (like undoing a commit), there are multiple approaches you can use.

The safest way is to use git revert {HASH} to create a new commit that automatically contains an opposing change diff to the commit corresponding with {HASH}.

However, if don't care about revising past history (for example, if you are working by yourself on a feature branch) you could use rebase and perform a drop on the commit(s) you want to undo.

Reverting Parts of a Commit, Reverting Files

When talking about reverting individual files, it is important to clarify what "revert" means.

If that means resetting a file to its contents at a certain point in time, you can use the git checkout {SHA} -- {FILEPATH} trick, but this will completely replace the contents with whatever it was at {SHA}.

If you instead want to undo or revert the changes made to a particular file in a particular commit, there are considerable more diverging approaches, but the easiest way is:

git show {SHA} -- {FILEPATH} | git apply -R

If you get an error of error: unrecognized input with the above command, try:

• Using safer options: git show --patch --no-color {SHA}
• Quoting your file path(s)
• Checking that the file was actually changed at the given commit and that the commit is not a merge commit
  • Make sure git show {SHA} -- {FILEPATH} has non-empty output
  • Merge commits will not show a diff with git show by default, but there are workarounds
    • Example, use --first-parent: git show --first-parent {MERGE_COMMIT_SHA} -- {FILEPATH}

Revise the last commit

If you want to undo the last commit, but keep changes locally so you can edit and then re-commit

• git reset HEAD~1
• If you want to re-commit with original message
  • Interactive commit message editor
    • git commit -c ORIG_HEAD
  • No editor
    • git commit -C ORIG_HEAD
• Else if you want to just nuke it
  • git reset --hard HEAD

Nuke it - reset to remote main

1. git fetch origin
2. git reset --hard origin/main

You can use this to reset to head of any branch really. Just make sure you have fetched. For example,

git reset --hard or git reset --hard HEAD.

Useful for when you accidentally diverge and want to revert to the origin as source of truth.

This won't actually remove/delete untracked files. To do that, see below section.

🚨 However, it WILL blow away uncommitted changes to tracked files, and you CANNOT get these back, even via reflog. If you want to preserver these but still use --hard, make sure you git stash and then git stash pop after reset.

Removing and Unstaging Files

Remove untracked files

• Interactively
  • git clean -i -fd
• Remove all untracked files and directories
  • git clean -fd
• Also smart to use this flag: --dry-run [OR] -n

Good combo: git clean -fd -n to preview, and then git clean -fd to finalize

Remove a file from git tracking after adding it to the gitignore

• Use --cached flag with rm
  • git rm --cached <file>

"unstage" a file (do the reverse of git add)

• Single file
  • git reset -- [FILEPATH_TO_UNSTAGE]
    • Note that the "--" is because git reset can also be used with branches instead of files, so "--" is to specify this is only for files
  • To unstaged and checkout unchanged (non-dirty) version: git checkout HEAD -- {FILEPATH_TO_RESET}
• All added files
  • Same as above, but instead of -- {FILEPATH} use .

Auto Stashing

For rebasing, there is a built-in autostash config option in git that makes it so you don't have to manually stash changes for an unclean working directory before rebasing.

git config rebase.autoStash true

or

git config --global rebase.autoStash true

For automatically stashing and popping on branch checkout, there is no built-in autostash option you can now use the git switch -m command. You could also solve this with some bash aliases or custom scripts.

Submodules

• git-scm page
• Good submodule cheatsheet: vogella.com/tutorials/GitSubmodules

Add a submodule

• With SSH access
  • git submodule add git@github.com:joshuatz/j-prism-toolbar.git [LOCAL_FOLDER_PATH]/[NEW FOLDER THAT DOES NOT EXIST]
• With standard Github credentials
  • $ git submodule add https://github.com/joshuatz/j-prism-toolbar.git [LOCAL_FOLDER_PATH]/[NEW FOLDER THAT DOES NOT EXIST]
• If something goes wrong, don't be afraid to manually edit .gitmodules and .git/CONFIG
  • StackOverflow

Update a submodule / init after clone

• To clone a repo, and include submodules from the get-go
  • git clone --recurse-submodules {originUrl}
• If you forgot to clone with recurse on, you can initialize submodules after the fact by using:
  • git submodule update --init or git submodule update --init --recursive

Updating (fetch)

• Easiest to remember is to just treat git subdir as real git repo
  • cd to the directory, then run git fetch and git merge origin/main
  • Then cd back up, and commit the update to the parent repo
• Alternative is to use shorthand command
  • git submodule update --remote

Remove a submodule

Most complete option - https://stackoverflow.com/a/36593218

1. Remove the submodule entry from .git/config
   • git submodule deinit -f path/to/submodule
2. Remove the submodule directory from the superproject's .git/modules directory
   • rm -rf .git/modules/path/to/submodule
3. Remove the entry in .gitmodules and remove the submodule directory located at path/to/submodule
   • git rm -f path/to/submodule

TEMPORARILY jump to a specific moment in time

• Very cool, you can just checkout the commit!
  • git checkout 778de63b25d66b576beba53b2ca0506ced9dded7
• If you want to jump back to tip after, just checkout the branch name again
  • git checkout main
• If your workspace is "dirty" you might need to use --force

Merging a branch the default Github PR way

git merge [BRANCH_TO_MERGE] --no-ff

The reason why you can see commits grouped together with a specific PR / branch merge on Github is because when you click the "merge" button, instead of just doing git merge [BRANCH_TO_MERGE] it uses git merge [BRANCH_TO_MERGE] --no-ff

• --no-ff means "no fast forward":
• Default merge uses fast forward, which basically says that if the branch you are merging into shares a common history with the branch you are merging, it will "fast forward" the base branch until it points to the last commit on the branch you are merging.
• "no fast forward" means all the commits that make up the feature branch you are merging are kind of lumped together (or treated as children) as a new EXPLICIT merge commit. This is why when you merge a PR on github, it forces you to create a new specific merge commit.

Side Benefit: Merging this way means that you can point to a specific commit that brought in a set of feature changes (or an entire feature). This provides a bunch of different benefits:

• To undo the merge of a feature, you just need to revert one commit, instead of having to do some crazy stuff with finding the commit before the merge was done, or cherry picking commits, etc.
• You can easily visualize branch history, and see where a feature was specifically worked on separately
• Git GUI's (like Github) will treat it like a "true merge" if you do it this way

Moving Files

• Why use git mv?
  • most of the time, Git can guess renames/moves vs new files based on contents and filename, but not 100% of the time. Git mv is a little more foolproof, since you are explicitly telling Git where your files are moving to / getting renamed
    • git mv also automatically takes care of the "git rm" for the old file, and "git add" for the renamed/moved file
• Methods:
  • One by one
    • git mv oldfiledir/oldfile.h newfilepath/oldfile.h
  • Bulk
    • Generally, you can just move the files yourself, and when you "git add" or "git add -A", it should detect rename vs new files
    • Make sure you do git add after moving the files, but BEFORE changing contents. Since the git rename detection works by content hash.

Show which files are being ignored:

On git v1.7.7 and up (SO),

git status --ignored

Explain why a file is ignored

git check-ignore -v {FILE}

Dealing with Dirty Files / Conflicts

• Unmerged paths / both modified
  • Discard changes completely
    • git checkout HEAD -- {FILE}

Stashing / Temporary Staging

Docs:

• git-scm
• Atlassian tutorial

Stashing - Reminders:

• stash will grab both staged and unstaged files, by default (but not untracked)
  • If you only want certain files (e.g. staged), you need to use patch and/or push. See "partial stashes" notes below.
  • NEW: Starting with git 2.35, you can use stash --staged to stash just staged changes
• Stashes are NOT synced with origin / remote

Stashing - The basics

• Stash:
  • git stash
  • Include untracked or ignored files:
    • git stash -u
    • git stash -a
  • Just staged files (git >= 2.35)
    • git stash --staged
• Pop:
  • git stash pop
• See all stashes:
  • git stash list
• Search stashes
  • git stash list -G"{REGEX}"
    • This really comes from git log
• Apply stash without popping it / losing it from stack
  • git stash apply
    • Warning: This will also stage the changes
• Using a stash as a reference
  • stash@{NUMBER}
• View the contents (changes) of a stash
  • Very last stash: git stash show -p
  • Another stash:
    • git stash show -p NUMBER
    • git show stash@{NUMBER} (might have to use -m)

Partial stashes

SO answers: 1, 2, 3

• Just staged files (requires git version >= 2.35)
  • git stash --staged
• Interactive (hunk picker)
  • git stash -p (or git stash --patch)
• Single file:
  • (Still interactive, but just hit a to stash all hunks in current displayed file)
    • git stash -p index.html
    • You can even include a message!
      • git stash -p index.html -m "trying out different CDN"
  • Newer syntax (> v2.13) - non interactive
    • git stash push {flags} -- {pathspec}
    • Example:
      • git stash push -m "trying out different CDN" -- index.html

    • Order matters! -- {pathspec} must come last.

git stash -p is an internal alias for git stash push -p

Reminder: There is no "cost" to just using a temporary branch to stash changes, and is usually a better alternative to stashing. Or, explore using patches or actual temp files with arbitrary extension that is then gitignored (e.g. ".tempdump")

Dumping changes (git diff) as a patch file

If you want to quickly dump all the differences between two branches (lets say between feature and main), or just the changes in your current branch, as a backup, you could export the diff as a patch file.

git diff main > {filename}.patch

Or, to create a patch based on difference between current and staged, just leave off the branch:

git diff > {filename}.path

🚨 WARNING: This won't capture untracked changes. As a workaround, some might prefer to stage all their changes and then use git diff --cached > {filename}.patch.

🚨 WARNING: If you want to capture binary change (e.g. JPG files, EXEs, etc.), you need to use --binary when creating the patch

And to restore from that patch, you can either use patch or git apply:

• git apply: git apply {filename}.patch

  • Use --include={FILE_PATTERN} to only apply to specific files. Useful if your patch file contains changes for a lot of files, and you only want to apply a subset.
    • This can be a glob
  • Use --stat or --summary to show some information about proposed changes, but don't apply

• patch: patch -p1 < {filename}.patch

  • Use --dry-run with patch for a preview of changes.

  Use patch -p0 if --no-prefix was used with git diff

Credit: S/O answer

Metadata (commits, files, etc.)

Show BOTH the authorDate and commitDate

• git log --format=fuller

Get 'last modified' timestamps:

• git show -s --format=%at
  • -s = --no-patch = suppress diff info
  • --format=%at = --pretty[=<format>] = pretty-print
    • %at = 'author date, UNIX timestamp'
      • Alternative: %ct = 'committer date, UNIX timestamp'
  • For a specific thing (commit, tree), just put it last:
    • git show -s --format=%at {thing}
• git log --pretty=format:%at | head -n 1
  • Gets the log, formats as UNIX stamps, sorts, then limits to one line
  • This can be for a file, etc:
    • git log --pretty=format:%at -- myfile.js | head -n 1
  • Alternative: git log --pretty=format:%at | sort | tail -n 1
• git log -1 --pretty=format:%at
  • Same as above, but uses the -{numLimit} git option to pre-limit the result to one line
    • Now we don't have to use head or tail to limit

committer date vs author date - there should only ever be one author date, and it corresponds to when the code was actually first committed/authored with git commit. However, there can be multiple commit dates, and they correspond to when the commit was modified in the process of applying it through merge/rebase. See "Issues with dates and rebasing" on this page for details.

Get date 'created' timestamps:

• git log --pretty=format:%at --follow -- {thing} | tail -n 1
  • --follow will make sure it captures renames in history
  • SO

Warning: You cannot combine --reverse with --follow; this is a known bug

Git Attributes (gitattributes)

Check Attributes

• git check-attr {flag} {path}

Example (shows all attributes)

• git check-attr -a cheatsheets/vue.md

Git Hooks

Reminder: Git hooks are not committed into your repo by default. The recommended way to share hooks in a repo is to create a checked-in folder, like /.githooks (but this can be named anything), and automate copying (or even better, symlinking) the scripts to the real githooks location (.git/hooks/*). This could be done with Bash scripts, BAT, MAKEFILE, etc. See this and this. Or use a dependency for automatic hook installation and management (some options further below)

Reminder: Add "shebang" to file and make sure executable (chmod +x).

Git Hooks - Resources

• Atlassian Guide
• githooks.com

Git Hooks - Management Tools

• Husky
• simple-git-hooks

Git Hooks - Tips

• Pre-commit
  • You can add files to the commit, without the user needing to interact or approve, by just calling git add within the git hook
• Post-Commit
  • Be very careful using further git commands within a post-commit git hook. Very easy to accidentally write an endless loop
    • For example, if you touch a file and then amend it to the last commit, that will actually trigger the hook itself and you will end up looping

Git Tags

As usual, Atlassian has one of the best guides: here

Tip: Something that a lot of tutorials gloss over or don't even mention, but what I feel like should be bullet point number #1, is that when you create a tag and don't explicitly attach it to a specific commit, by default it gets attached to the current commit that the HEAD is pointing at.

Creating a tag does not actually check new code into VC or save the "state" of your environment. It is more like a pointer to commit.

In brief:

git describe --tags can return a tag in a format that looks like v2.4-28-a402cbee4 - that is: `{tag_name}-{number_of_commits_since_tag}-{commit_hash}

Finding commit that a tag points to

One command you can use is git rev-list -n 1 {tagName}, which will get you the hash of the commit the tag points to. You can then use something like git show to get the full commit details (author, changes). Or, as a one liner:

git rev-list -n 1 {tagName} | xargs git show

What do I use for a tag name?

Up to you! A lot of people use Semantic Versioning with tags to correspond to releases. In fact, Github will automatically create new releases under the corresponding tab of your repo if you add tags.

A sample tag might be something like v1.4.23 or v1.4.23-beta.1+autobuild24.

How do I move a tag?

The short answer is you don't; make a new tag instead of moving an existing one.

The long answer is that you technically can with --force, but in 99% of cases, you don't want to do this.

Annotated vs lightweight

Essentially, lightweights can only be the name of the tag, and nothing more. Whereas with annotated, you can add a message, sign with PGP key, and more.

Dates in Git

📘 Excellent reference: Peattie - Working with Dates in Git

Although we often talk about git only in terms of linked nodes, human-understandable dates have an impact on both writing and retrieving commits.

• Commits store both an AuthorDate (GIT_AUTHOR_DATE) and CommitDate (GIT_COMMITTER_DATE)
  • When replaying or modifying commits (e.g. via amends or rebases), the Author Date will stay the same, but the Comitter Date will reflect whenever the commit was modified / replayed.
    • See my section on Issues with Dates and Rebasing for details
• You can use git dates as references, using them for jumping to points or querying
  • git checkout main@{"30 minutes ago"}
  • git diff main@{"yesterday"} main@{"1 year 2 months ago"}

Date references also work in GitHub URLs (kinda), with github.com/{USER}/{REPO}/tree/{BASE_REF}@{DATE_REF}

Rebasing

Some explanations / resources:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1wnYdLEpgI
• https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/rewriting-history/git-rebase
• https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/merging-vs-rebasing

💡 If you use rebase a lot, you might want to consider configuring rebase to always use autostash, so you don't have to manually stash changes for an unclean working directory before rebasing.

git config rebase.autostash true

or

git config --global rebase.autostash true

💡 Another helpful rebase config option is to set rerere.enabled to true. Details here

What Does Rebasing Do?

If (like me), you have trouble remembering and conceptualizing what rebase actually does, just think about the name... "re-base" - you are re-setting the base of the of a bunch of commits to a new one.

This is sometimes referred to as changing the parent, moving the base, etc.

Here are some guides:

• Rebasing vs merging (Atlassian)
• git rebase (Atlassian)
• git rebase (git-scm)

However, the rebase command is a lot more powerful than just moving the base of a branch - you can use it to edit past commit messages, reorder commits, drop commits, and much more.

Rebase Commands

** Where {baseRef} is one of standard ref (id, branchName, tag, HEAD, etc.)

• Rebase non-interactively
  • git rebase {baseRef}
• Rebase interactively
  • git rebase -i {baseRef}

Example: Rebase branch alpha onto main

Previously:

A---D---E (HEAD main)
     \
      B---C (HEAD alpha)

After:

A---D---E (HEAD main)
         \
          B*---C* (HEAD alpha)

* = same diffs, but SHAs have changed due to rebase

• Rebasing from the branch you are altering the parent of. Usually a feature branch.
  • git checkout alpha && git rebase main
• Rebasing while on the parent (usually main):
  • git rebase main alpha
  • git rebase HEAD alpha

References and Terminology while Rebasing

This might be one of the most confusing things about rebasing - while in the middle of an interactive rebase, a lot of the references and terms get literally inverted from what they are during other git operations (like during merge).

🚨 No really, theirs and ours have directly opposite meanings during git merge vs git rebase!

While rebasing:

• Branch / commit we are rebasing onto = Current / HEAD / Ours
  • E.g. origin/main that we are rebasing our feature branch onto
  • Git ref: HEAD
  • To checkout a file from it:
    • git checkout --ours {FILE}
    • git checkout HEAD -- {FILE}
• The branch we started with / are rebasing = Incoming / Theirs
  • E.g. a feature branch we working
  • Git ref: Not provided, but the contents of .git/rebase-merge/stopped-sha contains the commit SHA for an interactive rebase
    • .git/rebase-apply/stopped-sha for non-interactive rebases
  • To checkout a file from it:
    • git checkout --theirs {FILE}

🔗 📄 This post has a good explanation of how these references get flipped around between git merge and git rebase.

Rebasing with --onto

Explainer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/29916361/11447682

The onto (--onto) argument is a powerful time-saver with git rebase, useful for scenarios in which you want to drop commits while moving the base of a branch. Without --onto, rebase assumes that the base that should be moved is just the common ancestor with whatever the new base is, but with --onto, you specify the exact base that should be moved.

git rebase --onto <newparent> <oldparent>

Where the SHA passed to --onto as <oldparent> should be for the commit right before the range you want to preserve.

Rebasing: Quick Fixup Commits

If you want to revise a specific commit instead of going through the normal full interactive rebase process, there is a slightly faster way to revise it using a "fixup" commit.

1. Stage your changes, and then run git commit --fixup={HASH_OF_COMMIT_YOU_WANT_TO_FIX}
2. Have git handle moving and squashing for you: git rebase --interactive --autosquash {HASH_OF_COMMIT_BEFORE_ONE_YOU_WANT_TO_FIX}
   • You can use {HASH_OF_COMMIT_YOU_WANT_TO_FIX}~1 instead of {HASH_OF_COMMIT_BEFORE_ONE_YOU_WANT_TO_FIX}
3. Save and quit when Git opens the editor

Rebasing: Editing a commit (without splitting)

1. Use rebase to stop and edit the commit you want to edit.
2. Now you have two routes:
   • Option A: make the changes immediately, and then use git commit --amend to save the edits
   • Option B: Run git reset HEAD~ to unstage all the changes in the commit, then make your changes and run git commit

If you just need to edit the very last commit in your branch, it is much faster to skip rebasing by just making changes, staging them, and then using git commit --amend

Rebasing: Splitting up Commits

With rebase, in addition to modifying past commits, you can also inject new ones and even take an existing past commit and split it into multiple commits. This is particularly useful if you end up doing too much work in a commit and decide you want to split it up later to make it easier to review and/or revert in chunks.

To split up a past commit:

1. Use rebase to stop and edit the commit you want to split up. How you do this exactly is up to and depends on if you want to do anything else during this rebase operation
   • If all you want to do at this time is split up the commit, you can use git rebase --interactive {HASH_OF_COMMIT_TO_SPLIT}~, then select edit for that commit before continuing
2. When rebase stops on that commit to edit it, use git reset HEAD~ to essentially undo the commit and unstage the changed files
3. Create your new split commits: for each new commit, stage the portions of code you want, then use git commit as you normally would. Repeat as needed.
4. Once you have made all the changes you wanted to (the original commit has been fully broken up into smaller ones), you can use git rebase --continue to finish up with the rebase workflow.

🔗 Helpful StackOverflow

Rebasing Workflows - Example Scenarios

Rebasing a Stacked PR or Feature Branch After Trunk Experienced a Squash Merge

If squash-merges have been used in a branch (such as main), it makes rebasing against the new history a lot trickier.

Let's say that you are working on feat-b, which was based on feat-a, but feat-a was just squash-merged into origin/main, and you want to rebase.

If you still have a reference to the branch that was just squash-merged (feat-a), you can take a shortcut with:

git rebase --onto origin/main feat-a

This is really a shortcut for manually finding the merge-base between the trunk and the feature branch. E.g., git merge-base

However, if you don't have a reference to the original branch (such as if you are on a different machine and the remote branch was deleted), you will need to manually find the last commit in your local feature branch that represents the starting point for your divergent work on the feature - i.e., the last commit from the PR that just got merged - then pass that to rebase with git rebase --onto origin/main {COMMIT_SHA}.

Finally, you can also always manually use interactive rebasing or cherry-picking.

Rebase vs ff merge

A rebase that is used just to reset the base (and not make other edits) is very similar, in results, to a "fast forward merge" (through git merge (if it can ff and defaults have not been changed) or git merge --ff-only). Both methods result in a linear history, that makes it look like the feature branch commits were applied directly to main (without merge commits).

Example rebasing of feature onto main

git checkout feature
git rebase main # Or, git rebase -i main

## One-liner
git rebase main feature

The main difference seems to be that rebase is really replaying or copying commits onto the new base, versus merge ff, which is more like a pointer move. The result is that, although the output looks the same, rebase can end up with different commit hashes, since copying a commit results in a slightly different hash.

Note: The one-liner syntax for rebase still performs a checkout first, changing your working directory; it just does it for you, behind the scenes. If you want to rebase without modifying working directory, you will need to use something like worktree

Atlassian has an in-depth explainer on the differences: "Merging vs Rebasing"

Issues with dates and rebasing

Since you are technically re-commiting when you rebase (by re-writing history), the default thing that happens is that the Author and AuthorDate stay the same as before, but the Commit (author) and CommitDate reflect yourself and the current time of the rebase.

You can use git log --pretty=fuller to show both AuthorDate and CommitDate at the same time, to verify if this has happened

This can make it look like old commits have just been made and can sometimes cause issues with different tools that integrate with Git.

Github used to go by CommitDate for ordering and display within a repo (1, 2) which could really mess with the commit order in a PR (at least for casual viewing). This was fixed in 2020.

To avoid this behavior, use the --committer-date-is-author-date flag with git rebase, but only when it really makes sense to use (see below for details).

In most cases, the default behavior makes sense to use. If changes are being rebased onto a new base, where the changes rely on functionality present within the new base, it doesn't make sense to say those changes happened before the functionality was implemented in base, so default rebase date behavior makes sense.

If we have already used rebase, and now our dates are messed up, we can use the same rewriting properties of rebase to fix the very problem it created, and edit the past commit dates, still using the --committer-date-is-author-date flag, like so:

git rebase --committer-date-is-author-date {commitHash}

For picking the commitHash to rebase from, pick the first commit that has a correct date, where the author and commit dates match, and use it.

Credit goes to this S/O.

Warning 🚨: This flag is easy to misinterpret; it essentially sets the committer date to whatever the author date (usually this means pretending it happened earlier than it did).

If you want the opposite, to force the author date to match the committer date, you will want to use -i, --ignore-date, or --reset-author-date (v > = 2.29). Similar to the above trick, you will also need to pick a commit hash that comes before the one you want to fix, if the commit you want to fix is the current HEAD.

Squashing on Github - Issues

Github has two advanced options for merging PRs - "squash and merge" and "rebase and merge" can both lead to complicated issues.

For example, squashing and rebasing often changes the metadata about who committed the code, and in the case of squashing, it can attribute large quantities of code by dozens of authors, to a new single author.

In late 2019, Github improved how attribution works with squash merges, by automatically adding everyone who touched the code in the PR as a co-author. You can see this automated text in the bottom of the squashed commit text.

Tools like Gitlens often do not play nice with complex code history, where there are multiple authors (co-authors), a different committer vs author, etc.

Github's "squash and merge" option basically leaves two commit trails. The branch that you merged from will have the full commit history. The branch you are merging into will have just a single commit that bundles up all the commits that made up the PR.

Rebase - Opinions

General Rule: Here is the general rule about rebase that seems to be the consensus: Rebasing on your own stuff (your branch of shared repo, feature, solo repo) that is not yet under active review or part of shared code is fine. Rebasing on shared branches, other people's branches, or commits that are already pushed and others rely on or are reviewing, is not (under most circumstances).

You will find that many well-established organizations and repositories follow this principle; here is GitHub mentioning it.

Something I find kind of funny is that rebase goes against a lot of best practices around source control (source of truth, preserving history, etc.), but can also make using it more enjoyable (in certain situations) and you will often find that developers have very strong opinions about it.

I personally think that the value from git rebasing is very contextual, similar to how I feel about squash merging. My general advice is:

• You will find less value in rebasing if:
  • You already write very clean commit messages and follow a logical commit pattern
  • You use --amend to fixup commits instead of things like commit -m "Whoops, maybe it will work now"
  • Reviewers or viewers of your code (including your future self) don't care much about a clean commit history
  • Squash merging is being used, so you can cleanup your final commit message at the end.
• You will likely find more value in rebasing if:
  • You feel writing well-crafted commit messages and ensuring each commit is logically contained slows your process down while working, and you would rather "tidy things up" at the end
  • Reviewers or viewers of your code (including your future self) care about a clean commit history
  • Squash merging is not being used - all commits are preserved

Also, when in doubt, make temp local backup branches before attempting anything complex with rebase 😅

Git styles, standards, best practices

Good reference: agis/git-style-guide.

Branch naming

Here is a good S/O thread on the topic. And here is a Dev discussion.

Easy, good rules to remember:

• No caps
• Use hyphens instead of spaces
• Try to keep branch names short
  • Use "grouping" tokens and slashes to help
• Use issue / ticket IDs when applicable

Examples:

• feature/OMT-4215/adding-gps-locator
• feature/adding-gps-locator/joshua
• joshua/OMT-4215/adding-gps-locator

You should try to avoid using master as your main branch, and use something like main, production, or whatever else makes logical sense. "Master", at least in the origins of Git (and its intention to replace Bitkeeper), has roots in a "master / slave" relation context, and in addition, often isn't a great descriptor of what the branch is for anyways! And, it often doesn't take that much effort to change.

Writing Commit Messages

• To encourage writing good commit messages, you might want to avoid using commit -m "my message", and switch to using commit, which will launch your default text editor and encourage you to write a full commit message.
  • To set VSCode as the default commit editor, it should be as easy as: git config --global core.editor "code --wait"
• There is no single "standard", but a very common format is one outlined by Tim Pope in a blog post. This is further summarized and outlined in many other posts:
  • McKenzie: How to write a Git commit message properly
  • Painsi: Painsi/commit-message-guideline.md (GH Gist)
  • Ayodeji: How to Write Good Commit Messages: A Practical Git Guide
  • Beams: How to Write a Git Commit Message
• Here is my own summary of the Tim Pope standard:
  1. Heading: Short (<= 50 chars), capitalized, but no period
  2. Empty Line
  3. Body
     • This can be a single paragraph, multiple paragraphs, bulleted lists, or just a few sentences. BUT, they should adhere to the following format rules:
       • Lines should wrap at 72 characters (including bullet items)
       • Bullets should use * or -
       • Empty lines should be placed between multiple paragraphs, but are optional for between bullet list items
     • Use imperative grammar: Add test suite, not Added test suite
• My own personal preferences, and notes:
  • If you are using a ticketing system, make sure to include the ticket ID either in the head or body
    • Most systems, like Jira, will auto-link based on this
    • Github actually does this as well
      • if you write something like addresses #4 in your commit message - where there is an issue with id #4 - pushing the commit up will auto-associate it with the issue (or PR)
      • You can even close issues via commit messages - once the commit is merged into your default branch (details).
  • I prefer short bullet lists over long paragraphs
    • Bullet lists are also much easier to combine in rebase / merges, over paragraphs or sentences
    • Easy way to avoid 72 char wraps
  • If you did something "weird" in your commit (disabled a test, reverted critical code, etc.) - SAY SO
  • If you are going to insist on using Emoji in your headings, try to be consistent; take a look at emoji-log

Finding a force push on Github

1. Generate a token to use with the Github API if you don't already have one handy
2. Make a request to https://api.github.com/repos/{OWNER}/{REPO}/events
3. Scan / filter to events with pushEvent as the type
4. FURTHER filter to those where the new payload.head does not match any of the SHAs in the payload.commits array
   • Sample code:

   const filtered = data.filter((obj)=> {
   	let wasForcePush = false;
   	if (obj.type === 'PushEvent') {
   		const payload = obj.payload;
   		if (Array.isArray(payload.commits) && payload.commits.length) {
   			wasForcePush = payload.commits[payload.commits.length - 1].sha !== payload.head;
   		}
   	}
   	return wasForcePush;
   });

5. Once you have found the commit that forced a new diverged tip, you can create a new branch based off the commit right before that forced push (on Github.com via API)
6. Finally, you can check out the newly created branch locally, and if you want to, merge back.

Finding a Force Push - Further reading:

• https://objectpartners.com/2014/02/11/recovering-a-commit-from-githubs-reflog/
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/28958418
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/48020000

Wiping Git History - Squashing to a Single Commit

In certain cases, you might want a branch or repo to be devoid of history. In this case, what you are usually looking to do is squash the entire codebase into a single commit.

There are several ways to do this, enumerated here and here. The "orphan branch" solution, described in this response seems the most straight-forward and least error-prone of all the solutions listed.

Git LFS

WARNING: .gitattributes does not work with directories! So trying to track a directory with LFS will lead to confusing behavior (e.g., git lfs status will correctly show objects to be commited, but git lfs ls-files will not show the correct files after commit).

Instead of my_dir filter=lfs, use my_dir/**/* filter=lfs ...