Commonly Used Git Commands

Login & Pull

Set your git user email for every repository on your computer

$ git config --global user.email "xxx@email.com"

Set your git username for every repository on your computer

$ git config --global user.name "zyinghua"

Clone from github/gitlab, etc…:

$ git clone https://github.com/zyinghua/...

Pull from the repository cloned while staying in that clone (which contains .git):

$ git pull

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Commit & Push

1. Check Status (between the platform and the local repo):

   $ git status

2. Add a newly affected file:

   $ git add newFile.txt

3. Add ALL newly affected files:

   $ git add .

4. Commit the changes:

   $ git commit -m "Comment message goes here..."

5. Push the changes:

   $ git push

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Branch & Merge

To check all the branches:

$ git branch -a

To add a new branch:

$ git branch branchname

Or optionally choose a specific branch as a default:

$ git branch branchname branchname-copy-from

To change to a specific branch:

$ git checkout branchname

To specify remote ref for current branch;

$ git push --set-upstream origin my-main

Once commited in a non-main branch, the changes will not be visible to the other branches! Until the merge.

To create a new empty file:

$ touch filename.html (or txt, etc...)

To edit the file in git bash:

$ nano filename.html

To show differences between the current branch and the other one:

$ git diff otherbranchname (e.g. main)

To merge branches:

Switch to the main branch ($ git checkout main), and then: $ git merge branchname

Revert

Sometimes you would want to revert to a previous commit. To do so, first check the commit history and obtain the commit ID (e.g., a6b1234), then:

$ git reset --hard <commit_id>

$ git push --force

Local Soft Revert

You have done git commit, but want to revert back to AFTER git add (keep staged):

git reset --soft HEAD~1

You have done git commit, but want to revert back to BEFORE git add (keep unstaged):

git reset --mixed HEAD~1

Revert Partial Changes in the differences between base and changed branches (with PR reflection)

Sometimes when you make a PR, and you are asked to keep only some partial changes (i.e., remove some intermediate commits between the commit chain), you may do this:

1. Firstly, if you are referring to a remote branch, and you don’t have a main branch that keeps up-to-date with the remote main branch, then do (Otherwise please proceed to next):

   git remote add upstream https://github.com/<original-owner>/<original-repo>.git git fetch upstream

2. Make sure you are in your branch with changes:

   git checkout <branch-name-with-changes>

3. Rebase the branch (You may call origin/main if you skipped step 1):

   git rebase -i upstream/main

4. Now you should be in a state of file editing, by default you are in Vim (default editor for Git rebase) most likely, then to delete commits, simply use up/down arrows to switch to the lines of commits you wanna delete and do dd. After that, go to the bottom and type :wq, which means save write and quit. Now the edits are completed and only partial commits are kept.

5. To push to remote safely and reflect on the PR:

   git push --force-with-lease origin <branch-name-with-changes>

6. All set!