Useful Git commands

This file contains a list of common and hopefully useful basic git commands. It basically lists all the commands from the Radboud Git courses in gROW. The slides have their own dedicated webpage. You will find that the commands have been sorted below according to the presentation they are in, and subsequently in alphabetic order.

If you find any mistakes or omissions, please let me know.

Git basics

git add <file-name>

Adds the file(s) provided as an argument to the staging area. You can provide more than one file.

• git add . adds all changes in the current folder and subfolders to the staging area

• git add -A adds all changes in the repo to the staging area

• git add -p opens git interactive interface, which uses the following commands:

  Command	What does it do?
  y	Stage this hunk.
  n	Do not stage this hunk.
  q	Quit. Do not stage this hunk or any remaining hunks.
  a	Stage this hunk and all later hunks in the file.
  d	Do not stage this hunk or any later hunks in the file.
  /	Search for a hunk matching the given regex.
  e	Manually edit the current hunk.
  ?	Print help.

git commit

Opens default terminal editor to create commit message. After closing the editor a commit is created on current branch.

• git commit –m “a message briefly saying what you changed and why” the editor is not opened. Instead the supplied string is added as the commit message
  • Note that a message has a 72 character limit, whereas the description can be longer.
    • git commit -m "Message" -m "Description" adds a message, as well as a longer description.
• git commit --amend instead of creating a new commit, the previous commit is updated. The default text editor is opened so you may modify the original message.
  • git commit --amend -m "my updated commit message" the same as above, but uses the supplied message to update the previous commit

git config

Allows you to set options for your repositories:

• --local > --global > --system applies config to respectively all users on system, current user or only current project. --local is the default
  • Local: applies configuration to current repo only
  • Global: applies configuration to all repos owned by the user
  • System: applies configuration to every user on the system and all their repos. Requires admin rights.
• git config --global user.name "Jane Doe" sets user name for all your projects to Jane Doe
• git config --global user.email jane@example.com set user email for all your projects to jane@example.com
• git config --help opens help page on Git config

git help

Takes any of the other commands as an argument and provides the relevant documentation

• git help help or git help --help shows how to use this versatile command
• You can also add --help to any command to get information on its usage, e.g. git add --help
• Note to Git Bash for Windows users: in some cases documentation is opened in your browser rather than in the CLI.

git init

Initialises a Git repo in present folder and subfolders.

• git init ../path/to/other/folder adds an optional path as an argument to initialise the repo in a different folder than current

git log

Opens a log showing an overview of the repository’s commit history, including each commit’s unique identifier, author, date and time of change, ancd the original commit message.

git reset

Undoes previous commit and resets the previous changes to untracked.

• Note: This does not work after first commit of new repo!

git restore --staged <file name>

Unstages the changes from the file that was provided.

git rm --cached <file name>

Unstages the changes from the file that was provided.

git status

Outputs the repo’s status, like files that were added, removed or changed, the current branch etc.

git version

Shows version of Git on your machine

Git branching and teamwork

git branch --delete target-branch

Deletes ‘target-branch’. Instead of --delete you can also use -d. Note that you cannot delete a branch if:

1. You are currently in the target branch
2. If the branch has not bee merged into the upstream (i.e. parent) branch.
   • If you still wish to delete the branch, you can force it with git branch --delete --force target-branch or git branch -D target-branch for short

git branch --list

Shows a list of all your branches. Current branch is indicated by *.

• Shorter versions of this command are git branch -l and git branch

git branch new-branch-name

Creates a new branch with the name ‘new-branch-name’.

git checkout target-branch

Switches to the branch named ‘target-branch’.

• git checkout -b target-new-branch will create a new branch called ‘target-new-branch’ and switch to it afterwards
• See also git switch, which is now the recommended command for switching branches.

git clone url/to/repository

Clones a repository from the provided URL, which often starts in either ssh:// or https://.

git merge branch-name

Merges branch-name into your current branch.

git pull

Pulls the latest changes from the remote repo and merges them into your local branch.

git push

Uploads your local commits to the remote repo branch of the same name.

• git push -u origin branch-name uploads local commits explicitly to remote repo branch of name ‘branch-name’
  • The option -u (short for --set-upstream) links your local and upstream branch, making the connection a default

git switch target-branch

Switches to the branch named ‘target-branch’.

• git switch -c target-new-branch will create a new branch called ‘target-new-branch’ and switch to it afterwards
• See also git checkout, the old command for switching branches.