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Git cheatsheet

Recipes

Sticky notes for commands that I keep forgetting.

Miscellaneous

Getting help

git help --all
git help help

Optimize a repo

Warning

Don’t run git gc while another git gc or a git maintenance task is running, If aggressive options are used, your local repo could be corrupted.

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

Danger

If you omit --staged, you’ll lose your changes.

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

Warning

Although --force-with-lease is much safer than --force, this still rewrites your branch’s history, which can confuse and inconvenience collaborators.

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

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~~.

Syntax Meaning Example Valid in
refname Branch/tag by full name refs/heads/main log, diff, show, blame, rev-list
refname Branch/tag by short name main log, diff, show, blame, rev-list
sha1 SHA-1 or abbreviated SHA-1 f5c3e2a log, diff, show, blame, rev-list
ref~n nth first-parent ancestor of ref HEAD~2 log, diff, show
~~ref^~~ ~~First parent of ref (equiv. to ref~1)~~ ~~HEAD^~~ ~~log, diff, show~~
ref^n nth parent of merge commit ref main^2 log, diff, show
a..b Commits reachable from b but not a feat..main log, diff, rev-list
a...b Commits reachable from a xor b feat...main log, diff
ref^@ All parents of ref (equiv. to ref^1, …) HEAD^@ log, diff
ref@{n} Value of ref in the reflog n moves ago HEAD@{3} log, reflog, show
ref@{date} Value of ref at the specified date-time main@{now} log, show
~~@{1}~~ ~~HEAD~~ ~~@{1}~~ ~~log, show~~
@{-n} Value of HEAD in the reflog n moves ago @{-1} ~~log, show
ref^0 Underlying object for annotated tag ref v1^0 show, log, diff
~~ref^{}~~ ~~Underlying object for annotated tag ref~~ ~~v1^{}~~ ~~show, log, diff~~
ref -- path Commits reachable from ref that affect path HEAD -- src/ log, diff, blame

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