A work-in-progress list of my favorite Git commands
The following list is a reference to the Git commands I use the most. Beneath every command there is an explanation of its use.
As of September 2024, I updated the list with more helpful Git commands.
git init- Initialize an empty Git repository in the current folder
git clone <url-of-the-git-repository>- Clones an online repository.
- use the
--depth <depth-number>in which depth to clone the commit history, aka shallow clone.
git checkout -b <ranch-name>- Create a new feature branch.
git checkout <commit-hash> <name-of-file>- Restores a specific version of the file from a previous commit
git restore <name-of-file>- Discards the local changes and restores the file to its last committed state, assuming that you haven’t yet committed the changes.
git status- Get the state of the working directory, for example the modified files, staged changes and the branch name.
git add --all- Stages all changes in your working directory for the next commit.
git show <commit-hash>:<name-of-file>- Show the content of the specified file
git branch --list- A list of all local branches inside the repository.
git branch -D <branch-name>- Delete a branch locally.
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/<name-of-the-remote-branch name-of-the-local-branch>- Connect a remote branch to an existing local branch.
git push --set-upstream origin <name-of-the-local-branch>- Make a new remote branch, based on the local branch.
git push origin <name-of-local-branch>- Push the local branch to remote.
git push origin --delete <name-of-local-branch>-
Delete a remote branch.
git pull- Update the local branch from the remote one.
git rebase main- Merge main into a feature branch. A practical way to refresh the feature branch with changes that were made in other feature branches and merged to main.
git fetch --all- Get & update all (not only the mapped ones) remote branches locally.
git reset --hard- Discards all local changes to all files.
git reset --hard origin/main- Discards all local changes and jumps to the latest commit of the
mainbranch
- Discards all local changes and jumps to the latest commit of the
git reset --mixed HEAD- Undoes the staging of files but keeps file changes
git blame <name-of-file>- Displays the revision and author of each line in a file. This way you can identify the commit that introduced a particular change.
git cherry-pick <commit-hash>
-
applies the changes of commit with the hash, into the current branch.
git log -v- See a detailed history of what changes were made in each commit.
git log -p- See the history of commits along with the diff introduced in each commit.
git log <absolute-path-to-file>- List the commit history of a specific file in your repository.
git revert head- Revert the last commit you made.
git checkout <commit-hash> <absolute-path-to-file>- Revert changes of a single file in your repository. You can find the commit hash in the git history of your file.
git reflog- Displays all reference logs (reflogs). Use it to find the hash of a previously deleted commit and you want to recover it. You can find more information about this command here.
git fsck --lost-found- Checks the integrity of the repository and lists any commits that aren’t reachable from any branch. Use it to recover lost commits.
git tag <name-of-tag> <commit-hash>- Adds a new tag to a specific commit. Tags are useful when dealing with CI/CD and releases of your software.
git push origin <name-of-tag>- Pushes the tag created before to the remote branch