Git cheatsheet

Some commands for git I found useful.

Log

Check history of single line (or range of lines)

git log -L15,+1:'path/to/your/file.txt'

# Detailed description
# -L <start>,<end>:<file>
# -L :<funcname>:<file>

Graph view

git log --oneline --graph
git log --oneline --decorate --all --graph

Checkout

Create branch and checkout to it

git checkout -b <branchname>

Checkout and merge simultaneously

git checkout -m <branchname>

Reset

Warning: Do not use reset commands! As alternative to git reset --hard use git stash -u to stash all files (untracked included), so it can be reverted later.

git reset list

git reset --soft    # No changes in index/working tree
git reset --mixed   # Changes index, but not working tree
git reset --hard    # Reset index and working tree

Discard unstaged changes for a file

git checkout "path/to/file"

Detaching HEAD

git checkout --detach [<branch>]
git checkout [--detach] <commit>

Detaching HEAD, leading to “DETACHED HEAD” state. “DETACHED HEAD” - HEAD usually points to tip of some branch, but if we use git checkout –detach - we can point it to some commit. In this state we can create commits from another commit, but these commits WON’T BE POINTED BY SOMEONE!

          Nothing points here, these commits will be deleted by
          garbage collector
          |
          v    HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
      e---f     |
     /          v
a---b---c---d  branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
    ^
    |
  tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')

Use:

git checkout -b foo  # or "git switch -c foo"  **(1)**
git branch foo                                 **(2)**
git tag foo                                    **(3)**

Clone

Clone to specified folder

git clone <dest> <folder>

Clone current repository (only files, tracked by git) to other folder. Useful, when you want to prepare files for transfer (so it won’t include cache, build files and all other stuff that should be in your .gitignore)

# Inside of repository
git clone . <path/to/folder>

Squash

Squash last N commits (interactive) through rebase

git rebase -i HEAD~<N>

Tagging

Tags are very useful to mark specific commits. It’s more lightweight than creating whole new branch.

git tag -a v1.4 -m "my version 1.4"

# Such tags won't be pushed automatically, do it like this:
git push origin v1.4

Remove tracking files

Such action is often needed, if gitignore is updated with path to file, that is already being tracked.

git rm --cached <file>	# Remove file from tracking, but leave it in index

Handling remotes

Rename remote

git remote rename origin old-origin
git remote add origin https://dev.robopro.pro/...

Push all tags and branches to remote: (can work not very well)

git push --set-upstream origin --all
git push --set-upstream origin --tags

Configuration

git config --global user.name
git config --global user.email

git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout 900'
# 15 minutes. Might not be safe

Empty branch

Use the --orphan when creating the branch:

git checkout --orphan YourBranchName

This branch may be unpushable (to make it pushable, create commit with following command)

git commit --allow-empty -m "Initial commit"