Git Commands Cheat Sheet

Provide Your Identity to Git

Configure your identity to Git by setting your name and email id. Git uses this to track your changes when you commit. 

$ git config --global user.name "Kameshwar Singh"

$ git config --global user.email "kameshwar2004@gmail.com"

--global is optional and it means Git will always use above details (for all projects inside repository). To use a different name for a specific project, you should run above commands inside project without passing --global

Set Your Editor

Git uses vi or vim editors by default. If you want to use a different editor you need to override the default value.

$ git config --global core.editor emacs

Set Your Diff Tool

Git supports tools like kdiff3, tkdiff, xxdiff, emerge, vimdiff etc.

$ git config --global merge.tool vimdiff

Check Your configured settings 

$ git config --list

$ git config user.name 

Git Help

$ git help <verb>

$ git help config

Initializing a Repository

If you are starting from scratch and want to track your project in Git. Move to your project directory and then initialize Git repository. 

$ cd /d/workspace/MyProject

$ git init

Above command creates .git directory inside your project. This directory will contain all your necessary repository files. As of now it will be an empty directory.

Add Files to Repository

In order to track file/s; you need to add them to repository as shown below :

$ git add *.java   #add all java files

$ git add Apple.java

$ git add README

Clone an Existing Repository

If you want to contribute to an existing Git project, you need to start by cloning it. Corresponding thing in SVN/CVS ischeckout. When you checkout you get all latest files of the given project. But clone operation in Git complete data of your project on the server. This means you get all history data along with the latest one. This way you can also restore your server with your local data in case server gets crashed/corrupted. 

$ git clone <url>

$ git clone https://github.com/kameshwar/XImage.git  #clones my project XImage

Above command creates a directory named as XImage, initializes .git directory inside it and takes out all code.

$ git clone https://github.com/kameshwar/XImage.git MyXimage

Names your local copy as MyXimage instead of XImage. Note that above commands we are using http protocol to fetch code. Similarly you can use git protocol as well. 

$ git clone git://github.com/kameshwar/XImage.git

Check File Status

You can check which stage your file is through status command. It also tell you which branch you are on.

$ git status

# on branch master (master is default).

If you add a new file to your project and then run status command then that file will be listed under header Untracked Files . This basically means that Git sees a file you didn't have in previous snapshot(commit). To include it, you need to commit it. 

Tracking New Files

You begin tracking a file by running add command. After running add command on a file if you run status command then Git shows that file as tracked and staged. 

$ git add README

$ git add dir  # Add all files of directory

$ git status

Now README file will be under Changes to be Committed heading (means its staged). 

Staging Modified Files

Let's change a file that was already tracked and then run status command. Let that file is A.java.

$ git status

A.java appears under Changes not staged for commit - means, file that is tracked is modified in the working directory but not staged yet. To stage it; you need to run add command. So through this command you begin tracking new files, stage files and for marking merge-conflicted file as resolved. So now running add command on A.java will show it under Changes to be committed heading. 

Now suppose you again modify it and then run status command again. Now this file will be shown under?

Both Changes to be committed and Changes not staged for commit.

So it is listed as staged as well as unstaged both. This is because Git staged file as it is when you run add command but it underwent changes after that. 

Ignoring Files

There are cases when you don't want to add some of the files. These could be automatically generated files like logs or files which get generated by the system like compiled files. This you can achieve by creating an .gitignore file.

$ cat .gitignore

*.class

#ignore build directory

build/

#Eclipse . files

.classpath

.project

.settings

#target file which has jar

target/

Viewing Staged and Unstaged Changes

status command tells only which file changed, but doesn't give details. diff command can be used to know more details about staged/unstaged files and exact changes. Diff command tells which line was changed. 

$ git diff   # see what have you changed but not yet staged 

$ git diff --cached  # see what have you staged which will got to next commit

$ git diff --staged  # 1.6.1 and later

Committing Your Changes

$ git commit   # launches editor for giving comments 

$ git commit -m "message 1"  # inline message

Successful commit shows which branch you committed, what SHA-1 checksum the commit has, how many files were changed, statistics about line added/removed. 

Skipping the Staging Area

Git provides a simple shortcut -a to skip the staging area.

$ git commit -a -m "Added new file"   

Removing Files

To remove a file from Git, you have to remove it from your tracked files (i.e remove it from staging area ) and then commit. The Git rm command does that and also removes the file from your working directory. 

$ git rm Abc.tmp 

$ git commit   # File is permanently gone 

What if you want to remove file from staging area but keep it in working area. That is, keep file on your hard drive but remove it from Git. This is particularly useful if you forgot to add a file in .gitignore file. 

$ git rm --cached readme.txt 

$ git rm log/\*.log  # Remove all log files 

Moving Files

Unlike some other VCS systems Git doesn't track file movement explicitly. If you rename a file in Git , Git doesn't store its history. 

$ git mv README.txt README 

View Commit History 

Unlike some other VCS systems Git doesn't track file movement explicitly. If you rename a file in Git , Git doesn't store its history. 

$ git log  # Prints history in reverse chronological order 

$ git log -p -2  # Shows difference introduced in each commit; -2 to limit count

$ git log -U1 --word-diff # Word diff instead of line diff

$ git log --stat  # Show abbreviated stats of each commit

$ git log --pretty=oneline  # pretty for changing format other than default (short,full, fulller, oneline)

$ git log --pretty=format:"%h %s " --graph  

$ git log  --since=2.weeks

GUI History Visualizer

You can visualize commit history using a GUI tool. 

$ git gitk 

Undoing Things

What if you commit to early, forgot to add something or messed up something. Such case you need to commit again.

$ git commit --ammend  #Takes your stagging area and uses it to commit 

$ git commit -m 'Initial commit '

$ git add Forgotten_File.java

$ git commit --ammend

Fix merge conflicts 

$ git mergetool
Above command opens a GUI tool if you have installed one.