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Zaiste

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15 Git Commands You May Not Know

#git #beginners #productivity #tutorial

Using Git may be intimidating at times. There are so many commands and details to learn. The documentation, however, while being immense, is still greatly accessible. Once you overcome the initial feeling of being overwhelmed, the things will start to fall into place.

Here is a list of 15 Git commands that you may not know yet, but hopefully they will help you out on a journey to master this tool.

1. Modify The Most Recent Commit 

git commit --amend
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—-amend allows to append staged changes (e.g. to add a forgotten file) to the previous commit. Adding —-no-edit on top of that will amend the last commit without changing its commit message. If there are no changes, -—amend will allow you to reword the last commit message.

For more: git help commit

2. Interactively Add Selected Parts of Files 

git add -p
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-p (or —patch) allows to interactively select parts of each tracked file to commit. This way each commit contains only related changes.

For more: git help add

3. Interactively Stash Selected Parts of Files 

git stash -p
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Similar to git-add , you can use --patch option to interactively select parts of each tracked file to stash.

For more: git help stash

4. Stash with untracked 

git stash -u
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By default, when stashing, the untracked files are not included. In order to change that bevahiour and include those files as well you need to use -u parameter. There is also -a (—all) which stashes both untracked and ignored files altogether, which is probably something you usually won’t need.

5. Interactively Revert Selected Parts of Files 

git checkout -p
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--patch can be also used to selectively discard parts of each tracked file. I aliased this command as git discard

For more: git help checkout

6. Switch to Previous Branch 

git checkout -
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This command allows you to quickly switch to the previously checked out branch. On a general note - is an alias for the previous branch. It can be used with other commands as well. I aliased checkout to co so, it becomes just git co -

7. Revert All Local Changes 

git checkout .
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If you are sure that all of your local changes can be discarded, you can use . to do it at once. It is, however, a good practice to always use checkout --patch.

8. Show changes 

git diff --staged
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This command shows all staged changes (those added to the index) in contrast to just git diff which only shows changes in the working directory (without those in the index).

For more: git help diff

9. Rename Branches Locally 

git branch -m old-name new-name
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If you want to rename the currently checked out branch, you can shorten this command to the following form:

git branch -m new-name
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For more: git help branch

10. Rename Branches Remotely

In order to rename a branch remotely, once you renamed your branch locally, you need to first remove that branch remotely and then push the renamed branch again.

git push origin :old-name
git push origin new-name
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11. Open All Files with Conflicts at Once

Rebasing may lead to conflicts, the following command will open all files which need your help to resolve these conflicts.

git diff --name-only --diff-filter=U | uniq  | xargs $EDITOR
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12. What changed? 

git whatchanged —-since=‘2 weeks ago’
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This command will show a log with changes introduced by each commit from the last two weeks.

13. Remove file from last commit

Let's say you committed a file by mistake. You can quickly remove that file from the last commit by combining rm and commit --amend commands:

git rm —-cached <file-to-remove>
git commit —-amend
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14. Find Branches 

git branch --contains <commit>
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This command will show all branches that contain a particular commit.

15. Optimize the repository locally 

git gc --prune=now --aggressive
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For more: git help gc

Bonus

Although I like CLI a lot, I highly recommend checking Magit to further step up your Git game. It is one of best pieces of software I used.

There is, also, a fantastic overview of recommended Git workflows available via help command. Be sure to read it thoroughly!

git help workflows
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Latest comments (39)

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scratchcodeio profile image
Scratch Code •

Great Article! I recommended this tutorial for beginners: scratchcode.io/basic-git-commands-...

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miteshkamat27 profile image
Mitesh Kamat •

That's a good cheatsheet

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diogotome profile image
Diogo Tomé •

In my workflow it is routine to delete branches on Github Pull Requests when they're merged. This leaves the local repo with local branches that have since lost its tracking branch. To clear this I have the following alias under .gitconfig

prune-branches = !git remote prune origin && git branch -vv | grep ': gone]' | awk '{print $1}' | xargs git branch -D

So whenever a bunch of my PR's have been merged I just run git prune-branches and it prunes the remote branch references but also deletes the corresponding local ones.

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tpompon profile image
Thomas Pompon •

Nothing about git cherry-pick ? Still a nice post, could be useful !

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pshchelo profile image
Pavlo Shchelokovskyy •

as alternative to 11. you can also use

git mergetool [-t <tool>]

when rebase fails with merge conflicts

The default merge tool to use is configurable in .gitconfig, mine is vimdiff :-)
For vimdiff it opens 4-pane view with two conflicting versions (REMOTE and LOCAL), their common ancestor (BASE) and the actual current file with merge conflicts. After resolving the conflict and exiting it will open the next file with conflicts, one by one.

Out of the box Git knows how to work with more diff/merge tools - emerge, gvimdiff, kdiff3, meld, vimdiff, and tortoisemerge, but you can configure other ones explicitly yourself.

And there's also a similar but simpler git difftool which is just a visual frontend to git diff

git-scm.com/docs/git-mergetool
git-scm.com/docs/git-difftool

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tomakesense profile image
Kevin Xiong •

My small contribution

1.Count the number of commits on a branch
git rev-list --count master

2.Count number of branches in a git repository
git branch | wc -l

3.Delete remote branch cache in your local repository
git fetch -p

4.Delete remote tag cache in your local repository
git fetch -p -P

5.Delete a git alias
git config --global --unset alias.XXX

6.List git aliases
git config --list | grep alias

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sai2572910 profile image
Sai •

You think Code processing spreed of Git of Magit faster?

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guyzmo profile image
zmo •

you're telling about Magit, there's also the Vimagit plugin for the one true editor!

I cannot live without it. Before using that, I was already using GitXR on OSX, before it became discontinued. I also tried git-cola on linux.

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zerquix18 profile image
I'm Luis! \^-^/ •

Here's my small contribution: If you added a commit and already pushed it or merged it into another branch and you need to reverse those changes, you can always go:


git reverse {hash}

It will create a new commit with the changes reversed. Also, the new commit will have a reference to the reversed commit (i.e Github will tell you "this reverses {hash}")

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rajeshduggal profile image
Rajesh Duggal •

Which version of git has "git reverse"? I can't find it mentioned in git-scm.com/docs

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mfilej profile image
Miha Filej •

Probably meant git revert

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