Git Tips and Tricks

A collection of git tips and tricks. You can suggest more if you know anything else that might be useful that can be listed here.

Git Frequently used and useful command line codes

git config:

Set configuration values for user name,email etc

$ git config --global user.name "Your Name"
$ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"

git clone:

Makes a Git repository copy from a remote source. Also adds the original location as a remote so you can fetch from it again. If you have permissions you can push your changes to it too.

$ git clone [email protected]:yourname/projectname.git master

git commit:

Takes all of the changes written in the index, creates a new commit object pointing to it and sets the branch to point to that new commit.

$ git commit -m "added commit command on readme file"

// or to add and commit at once
$ git commit -a -m "added commit command on readme file"

git amend/edit commit:

Edit/Amend last git commit message

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

git ignore file mode

This will ignore files that don't have content change.

$ git config core.filemode false

If that doesn't work, you can run below command if you see files modified but with not content difference.

git add -uv

git pull/fetch force rewrite local to be same as origin HEAD branch

git fetch --all
git reset --hard origin/<current_branch>

Git Undo add / Reset File / Git Unstage File

git reset <file>

// or
git reset <HEAD | commit> <file>

// Overwrite local changes with last commit from HEAD
git checkout -- <file>

// remove previously committed file from git repository
git rm --cached <added_file_to_undo>

Git delete / reset / unstage local commit

Git Delete Last Commit: not pushed

git reset commit_hash
// or
git reset --soft HEAD~1
// --soft option will delete the commit 
// but it will leave all your changed files 
// "Changes to be committed", as git status would put it.

git status:

Shows the status of files in the index versus the working directory. It will list out files that are untracked (only in your working directory), modified (tracked but not yet updated in your index), and staged (added to your index and ready for committing).

$ git status

git branch:

Lists existing branches, including remote branches if '-a' is provided. Creates a new branch if a branch name is provided.

$ git branch
$ git branch -a

// create branch
$ git branch <name_of_your_new_branch>

// push to remote
$ git push origin <name_of_your_new_branch>

// delete local branch
$ git branch -D <name_of_your_branch>

// delete remote branch
$ git push origin :<name_of_your_branch>

git prune:

This will delete all remote branches that do not exist locally. To delete selected branch from remote use above code.

$ git push --prune origin

// effectively make the remote look like the local copy of the repo (local heads, remotes and tags are mirrored on remote)
$ git push --mirror

// As of Git v1.7.0, you can delete a remote branch using
$ git push origin --delete feature/scroll

// you can also delete remote branch like this
$ git push origin :feature/scroll

Find list of conflicting files

git diff --name-only --diff-filter=U

Find difference between committed and modified file

git diff <-option> <filename>
// Options:
// --ignore-space-at-eol
// => Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.

// -b (--ignore-space-change)
// => Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.

// -w (--ignore-all-space)
// => Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has whitespace where the other line has none.

// --ignore-blank-lines
// => Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.

Git tag

// Create new tag
git tag -a 1.2.3 -m 'Tagged as version 1.2.3'

// Push new tag to repository
git push origin 1.2.3

// Delete tag
git tag -d 1.2.3
git push origin :refs/tags/1.2.3

Git restore deleted file which is yet to commit

git checkout HEAD deleted-file.filetype

Git Save password / authentication

// store
git config credential.helper store

// unset
// current repo
git config credential.helper store
// global
git config --global credential.helper store


// or use cache, where timeout is in seconds
git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=xx'

gh-pages

Merging via git push

git push -f origin master:gh-pages

Your master branch needs to be a mirror or subset of the remote gh-pages branch, and it means if you’ve got the gh-pages branch locally it’ll now be behind GitHub’s version. However, using this method you can essentially ignore (or not even have) the gh-pages branch locally.

The -f (force) makes the push happen even if the gh-pages branch is newer (avoiding a “non-fast-forward updates were rejected” error). When using this method you shouldn’t be working on gh-pages at all, so the only time this will happen is if someone else pushes changes ahead of you. In that case you can merge those changes into your local master and push the gh-pages branch again. This is the shell script for force-pushing that Move the Web Forward uses.

briannhinton/git-tricks.md