Very Common and Very Uncommon Git Workflows

This page assumes the reader is an experienced user of git.

Very Common Workflows

I'm in a folder tree that I want to use with git. From the root I initialize:

git init

I want to see what changes I've made:

git status -uall

I want to see a diff of the changes I've made, before staging:

git difftool -d

After making some changes, I want to stage and commit the changes locally:

git add -A
git commit -m "Stuff I just did comment"

Look through historical log:

git log --oneline --date-order --graph --d -10

I want to see a diff of the changes I've made, after staging:

git difftool -d --cached

After making some changes, amend the last local-only commit to include the changes:

git commit --amend

Undo the last local-only commit:

this moves all the files in the commit to the workspace and moves the head to the parent commit

 git reset --soft HEAD^

Connect a local-only repository to a remote repository:

git remote add origin <url-to-remote>
git push -u origin master

Reference <url-to-remote> can look something like this:

https://github.com/<username>/<repository name>.git

Delete all files not tracked with git. Result should be like a fresh clone:

git clean -xfd

I want to squash and merge from my bugfix branch onto master:

 git checkout master
 git merge --squash bugfix
 git commit

######This will take all the commits from the bugfix branch, squash them into one commit and then merge it with your master branch. ######If you want to keep references to the old commit messages you can write git commit (without -m param) and you will get to modify a drafted commit message containing all commit messages that you squashed

Very Uncommon Workflows

Init a repository where the git files are stored somewhere other than the .git folder:

git init --separate-git-dir ./git

Push all local branches, including ones that aren't tracked:

git push --all origin -u

I'm on a private branch. master is behind origin. I want to switch to master and pull latest but for performance reasons, I don't want the working directory to switch to a stale master only to be immediately replaced with what's on origin.

While in the other branch:

git fetch
git checkout -B master origin/master

I'm on master, and I want to squash all of my local commits since origin into a single commit before doing a push.

before doing a fetch or pull:

git rebase -i origin/master

Locate the Commit in question:

git reflog

or

git fsck --lost-found

To rename a branch on remote:

git push origin origin/<old_name>:refs/heads/<new_name> :<old_name>

Show commits that contain the provided string in the commit content itself.

git log -p --grep "nasty bug"

Show commits that contain the provided string in the commit content itself.

git log -p -S 'Date.new'

Show commits that contain the provided string in the commit content itself, through all branches:

git log -S 'populate_database' --all

Publish / Unpublish branch

publish:

git push -u origin <branch_to_publish>

unpublish:

git push origin :<branch_to_publish>

or

git push origin --delete <branch_to_publish>

Determine which branch contains a commit

git branch --contains <commit>

or

git reflow show --all | grep <commit>

Animated workflow demos

#####Try the animated workflows at:

• http://pcottle.github.io/learnGitBranching/?NODEMO
• http://www.wei-wang.com/ExplainGitWithD3/

Other

######The stages of a file in Git

Untracked

'add' --> Unmodified

'edit' --> Modified

'stage' --> Staged

'commit' --> Unmodified

'remove' --> Untracked

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References

• Git Use Cases