GIT Commands Cheat Sheet

Here is a cli commands cheat sheet for GIT command, you can use this as a quick reminder for basic commands with a brief description for each of the commands.

What is GIT command?

Distributed version control system, below is a list of Git CLI commands with basic description.
# To set your identity:
git config --global user.name [name]
git config --global user.email [email]

# To set your editor:
git config --global core.editor [editor]

# To enable color:
git config --global color.ui true

# To stage all changes for commit:
git add --all

# To stash changes locally, this will keep the changes in a separate changelist
# called stash and the working directory is cleaned. You can apply changes
# from the stash anytime
git stash

# To stash changes with a message:
git stash push -m [message]

# To list all the stashed changes:
git stash list

# To apply the most recent change and remove the stash from the stash list:
git stash pop

# To apply any stash from the list of stashes. This does not remove the stash
# from the stash list
git stash apply stash@{6}

# To commit staged changes:
git commit -m [message]

# To edit previous commit message:
git commit --amend

# Git commit in the past
git commit --date="`date --date='2 day ago'`"
git commit --date="Jun 13 18:30:25 IST 2015"
# more recent versions of Git also support --date="2 days ago" directly

# To change the date of an existing commit:
git filter-branch --env-filter \
    'if [ $GIT_COMMIT = 119f9ecf58069b265ab22f1f97d2b648faf932e0 ]
     then
         export GIT_AUTHOR_DATE="Fri Jan 2 21:38:53 2009 -0800"
         export GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="Sat May 19 01:01:01 2007 -0700"
     fi'

# To remove staged and working directory changes:
git reset --hard

# To go 2 commits back:
git reset --hard HEAD~2

# Checkout the fb branch, and rebase from [remote]
git reset --hard [remote]/[branch]

# To revert first/initial commit on a branch:
# Running git reset --hard HEAD~1 will give error:
# fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD~1': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
git update-ref -d HEAD

# To remove untracked files:
git clean -f -d

# To remove untracked and ignored files:
git clean -f -d -x

# To push to the tracked master branch:
git push origin master

# To push to a specified repository:
git push [email protected]:[username]/[repo].git

# Tags: Tag a commit
git tag -a [tag] [commit] -m "[commit message]"

# Tags: To push a tag to remote:
git push origin [tagname]

# Tags: To delete a tag [tagname] on remote
git push --delete origin [tagname]

# Tags: To delete a tag locally
git tag -d [tagname]

# To force a push:
git push -f

# Branches: To delete the branch [branch]:
git branch -D [branch]

# Branches: To delete a local [branch]:
git branch -d [branch]

# Branches: To delete a remote branch [branch]:
git push --delete origin [branch]

# Branches: To delete all branches on remote that are already merged:
git branch --merged | egrep -v "(^*|main|dev)" | xargs git branch -d

# Branches: To make an exisiting branch track a remote branch:
git branch -u upstream/foo

# To see who commited which line in a file:
git blame [file]

# To sync a fork with the master repo:
git remote add upstream [email protected]:[username]/[repo].git # Set a new repo
git remote -v                                                # Confirm new remote repo
git fetch upstream                                           # Get branches
git branch -va                                               # List local - remote branches
git checkout master                                          # Checkout local master branch
git checkout -b new_branch                                   # Create and checkout a new branch
git merge upstream/master                                    # Merge remote into local repo
git show 83fb499                                             # Show what a commit did.
git show 83fb499:path/fo/file.ext                            # Shows the file as it appeared at 83fb499.
git diff branch_1 branch_2                                   # Check difference between branches
git log                                                      # Show all the commits
git status                                                   # Show the changes from last commit

# To view the commit history of a set of files:
git log --pretty=email --patch-with-stat --reverse --full-index -- Admin\*.py ] Sripts.patch

# To import commits from another repo:
git --git-dir=../some_other_repo/.git format-patch -k -1 --stdout [commit SHA] | git am -3 -k

# To view commits that will be pushed:
git log @{u}..

# To view changes that are new on a feature branch:
git log -p feature --not master
git diff master...feature

# To perform an interactive rebase for the prior 7 commits:
git rebase -i @~7

# To diff files WITHOUT considering them a part of git:
# This can be used to diff files that are not in a git repo!
git diff --no-index path/to/file/A path/to/file/B

# To pull changes while overwriting any local commits:
git fetch --all
git reset --hard origin/master

# To pull down a remote branch, but rebase any locally differing commits onto
# the top of the incoming commits:
git pull [remote] [branch] --rebase

# To update all submodules:
git submodule update --init --recursive

# To perform a shallow clone to only get latest commits:
# (helps save data when cloning large repos)
git clone --depth 1 [remote-url]

# To unshallow a clone:
git pull --unshallow

# To create a bare branch (one that has no commits on it):
git checkout --orphan branch_name

# To checkout a new branch from a different starting point:
git checkout -b master upstream/master

# To remove all stale branches (ones that have been deleted on remote): So if
# you have a lot of useless branches, delete them on Github and then run this:
git remote prune origin

# To prune all remotes at once:
git remote prune $(git remote | tr '\n' ' ')

# Revisions can also be identified with :/text
# So, this will show the first commit that has "cool" in their message body
git show :/cool

# To undo parts of last commit in a specific file:
git checkout -p HEAD^ -- /path/to/file

# To revert a commit and keep the history of the reverted change as a separate revert commit:
git revert [commit SHA]

# To pick a commit from a branch to current branch. This is different than
# merge as this just applies a single commit from a branch to current branch:
git cherry-pick [commit SHA1]

# Change author of a commit:
git commit --amend --author="Author Name [[email protected]]"

# The GPG key used for signing your commits
git config --global user.signingkey 0A46826A

# Sign new tags:
git tag -s v1.5 -m 'my signed 1.5 tag'

# Sign a commit:
git commit -a -S -m 'Signed commit'

# check any signatures it finds and list them in its output:
git log --pretty="format:%h %G? %aN %s"

# Defined the key to use for signing commits:
git config user.signingkey [KEYID]

# Set signing of commits globally:
git config --global commit.gpgsign true

# To list unstracked files:
git ls-files --others --exclude-standard

Check out the GIT command documentation .

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