Git cheatsheet¶

Recipes¶

Sticky notes for commands that I keep forgetting.

Miscellaneous¶

Getting help¶

git help --all
git help help

Optimize a repo¶

Git stores metadata as loose files until it chooses to consolidate them. Run git gc manually before backups:

if [[ "$(uname)" == Darwin ]]; then
  chflags -R nouchg .git/*
fi
git gc --prune=1.day
git fetch --prune

Editing – commit, rebase, etc.¶

Unstage a file¶

To remove a file from the index without affecting the working directory, use

git restore --staged file

Amend without editing¶

To avoid repeating the message, use --no-edit:

git commit --amend --no-edit

Fix a commit you just pushed¶

if [[ "$(git branch --show-current)" =~ master|main ]]; then
  printf >&2 \
    "%bRefusing on ref '%s'.**\n%b" "\e[1;31m" \
    "$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)" "\e[0m"
else
  git commit --all --amend --no-edit
  git push --force-with-lease
fi

Sign the commit¶

Use -S<id>, which is a single argument. For example, if the GPG key is named git, use

git commit -Sgit

Tag for release¶

Assuming tag.gpgSign is correct, -s/--sign is sufficient. Example:

git commit --sign v0.1.0-rc.0
git push --signed --tags

Diffs¶

Better diffs¶

Use --histogram (a much better diff algorithm) and --color-moved to show rearranged lines.

git diff --histogram --color-moved ref1..ref2

Only show modified files¶

To only show files that were edited (i.e. not added, deleted, etc.):

git diff --diff-filter=M

Find overly similar files¶

You can abuse Git’s copy-detection feature like this:

git diff --diff-filter=C --find-copies=1% --find-copies-harder

Regex search¶

Use -G'regex' to find (edited/added/deleted) lines that match regex. For example, to diff only Markdown lines like - Category 1C [...], run

git diff --histogram --color-moved -G'^- Category \d+[A-Z]' **/*.md

Plumbing commands¶

Common Git problems that require piping Git output.

Git distinguishes between porcelain and plumbing commands, where porcelain IO is human-readable and plumbing IO is machine-readable. Unfortunately, for historical reasons, Git is extremely inconsistent about this distinction. In fact, git status is a porcelain command, but git status --porcelain is plumbing. See VonC’s explanation on StackOverflow.

Simple things¶

Is file $f checked in?¶

git ls-files --error-unmatch "$f" > /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Table of branches¶

__git_branch_table() {
  local sep=$'\x1F'
  git for-each-ref \
    --sort=-committerdate \
    --format="%(refname:rstrip=-1)$sep%(committerdate:short)$sep%(authorname)$sep%(objectname:short)$sep%(subject)" \
    refs/heads/ \
    | column -t -s "$sep"
}

Tables¶

Refspec¶

Useless (redundant) syntax types use strikethrough.

† All is log, diff, show, blame, rev-list.