Git Quick Notes

TODO: This needs to be reviewed and updated for the latest uses I do

How to check which gitignore rule is ignoring the file

git check-ignore --verbose <PATH>

Quick cheat sheet for the most common and forgettable things.

Config

$ git config --global user.name "Shyamal vaderia"   
$ git config --global user.email vaderiashayamal@gmail.com  
$ git config --global core.editor "vim"  
$ git config --list 

Staging, Commit and Status

$ git diff          # Shows what you have changed but haven't staged
$ git diff --cached #Shows what has been staged but not commited

Log : commit history

$ git log --pretty=oneline 
$ git log --since=1.weeks
$ git log --since="2017-04-15" 
$ git log --author="Shyamal Vaderia" 
$ git log --before="2017-04-20" 

Amend

Normally done if you forgot to stage a file, or to change the commit message.

$ git commit --amend

If you want to stage more file than you have committed previously, just stage that files first than use this command and this will stage the file you forgot as well.

Unstage a file

When you want to unstage a file that you have staged.

$ git reset HEAD <file name>

Branching

$ git branch newBranch        # Ceates new branch
$ git checkout newBranch      # Go to newBranch
$ git checkout -b newBranch   # Same job as the above 2 commands
$ git branch                  # Shows all branches
$ git branch --merged         # Shows all merged branches
$ git branch --no-merged      # Shows unmerged branches
$ git branch -v               # Shows all branches and their last commits
$ git branch -d newBranch     # Deletes merged branches with this
$ git branch -D new           # Deletes unmerged branches
$ git branch -m newBranchName # Renames a branch
$ git merge newBranch         # Merge the branch version with the master
$ git mergetool               # use to solve merge conflicts

Rebasing

Rebasing moves a branch to a new ( master / base ) commit. This is also referred to as a fast forward merge.

$ git rebase master

Revert and Reset

Some times you want to eliminate a previous commit, but you still want to keep the commit for integrity reasons. Revert is usefull in this case.

$ git revert HEAD # You are back to where you started, but the commit was made

Reset eliminates previous commits and you can never get them back. You really should never use it actually.

$ git reset someFile 
# Removes a file from the staging area, but leave the working directory unchanged
$ git reset 
# Reset the staging area to match the most recent commit while leaving the working directory unchanged
$ git reset aCommit 
# Move back to this previous commit, reseting the staging area, but not the working directory
$ git reset --hard 
# Reset both the staging area and working directory to match the most recent commit
$ git reset --hard aCommit 
# Move back to the commit listed and change staging and working directory

Clean

Clean removes untracked files from your directory and is undoable.

$ git clean -n # Shows which files will be removed
$ git clean -f # Remove untracked files
$ git clean -df 
# Remove untracked files and untracked directories in the current directory
$ git reset --hard # Undoes changes on all tracked files
$ git clean -df # Removes all untracked files

Credential helper

Sometimes it is very tedious to enter Username and Password for same repository repeatedly. Here is a solution to that!

# Permanently authenticating with Git repositories
$ git config credential.helper store
$ git push https://github.com/repo.git
    Username for 'https://github.com': <USERNAME>
    Password for 'https://USERNAME@github.com': <PASSWORD>

Misc

Suppose you are on the master branch and you would like to test if the dev branch can be merged without conflict into the master.

# In the master branch
$ git merge dev --no-ff --no-commit

After that, you will be able to know if there’s a conflict or not.
To return in a normal situation, just abort the merge:

$ git merge --abort

Check a pull request locally

# Fetch the PR from the remote repository
git fetch origin pull/<PR-number>/head:<local-branch-name>

# Checkout the PR branch locally
git checkout <local-branch-name>

Make sure to replace <PR-number> with the actual pull request number and <local-branch-name> with a descriptive name for the branch you’ll check out locally.