📄
Git Commands

Git is the open source distributed version control system that facilitates GitHub activities on your laptop or desktop. This cheat sheet summarizes commonly used Git command line instructions for quick reference.

🚀 Install

https://desktop.github.com/

Git distributions for Linux and POSIX systems are available on the official Git SCM web site.

🔧 Configure Tooling

Configure user information for all local repositories

Sets the name you want attached to your commit transactions

$ git config --global user.name "[name]"

Sets the email you want attached to your commit transactions

$ git config --global user.email "[email address]"

Enables helpful colorization of command line output

$ git config --global color.ui auto

➕ Create Repositories

When starting out with a new repository, you only need to do it once; either locally, then push to GitHub, or by cloning an existing repository

Turn an existing directory into a git repository

$ git init

Clone (download) a repository that already exists on GitHub, including all of the files, branches, and commits

$ git clone [url]

🌿 Branches

Branches are an important part of working with Git. Any commits you make will be made on the branch you're currently “checked out” to. Use git status to see which branch that is.

Creates a new branch

$ git branch [branch-name]

Switches to the specified branch and updates the working directory

$ git checkout [branch-name]

Combines the specified branch’s history into the current branch. This is usually done in pull requests, but is an important Git operation.

$ git merge [branch]

Deletes the specified branch

$ git branch -d [branch-name]

🔄 Synchronize changes

Synchronize your local repository with the remote repository on GitHub.com

Downloads all history from the remote tracking branches

$ git fetch

Combines remote tracking branch into current local branch

$ git merge

Uploads all local branch commits to GitHub

$ git push

Updates your current local working branch with all new commits from the corresponding remote branch on GitHub. git pull is a combination of git fetch and git merge

$ git pull

🚩 Make changes

Browse and inspect the evolution of project files

Lists version history for the current branch

$ git log

Lists version history for a file, including renames

$ git log --follow [file]

Shows content differences between two branches

$ git diff [first-branch]...[second-branch]

Outputs metadata and content changes of the specified commit

$ git show [commit]

Snapshots the file in preparation for versioning

$ git add [file]

Records file snapshots permanently in version history

$ git commit -m "[descriptive message]"

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