Tarun Yadav's Blog

Git: Cheat Sheet (advanced)

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Tarun Yadav
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If you find git confusing, I created this little cheat sheet! Please, note that I voluntary skipped the basic commands like git commit, git pull/push... This cheat sheet is intended for "advanced" usage of git.

Git Cheat Sheet

🧭 Navigation - Go to the previous branch

git checkout -

🔍 Get the history

# Log in one line
git log --oneline

# Retrieve all commits by message
# Here all commit that contain 'homepage'
git log --all --grep='homepage'

# Retrieve all commit by author
git log --author="Maxence"

🙈Ooops #1: I reseted an unwanted commit. How to rollback?

# Get everything you did
git reflog

# then reset to the desired commit (i.e. HEAD@{4})
git reset HEAD@{4}
# ...or...
git reset --hard <commit-sha1>

For more detail about this command, I wrote this post.

maxpou

What's happens when you git commit

🤦‍♀️Ooops #2: I mixed-up with my local repo. How to clean it?

git fetch origin
git checkout master
git reset --hard origin/master
# You're now up-to-date with master!

🕵🏻‍♂️Difference between my branch and master

git diff master..my-branch

✔ Custom commits

# Edit last commit
git commit --amend -m "A better message"

# Add something to the last commit without writing message again
git add . && git commit --amend --no-edit

# empty commit - can be useful to re-trigger CI build...
git commit --allow-empty -m "chore: re-trigger build"

If you don't know what to put in your commit messages, I wrote a post about conventional commits.

♻️ Squash commits

Let say I want to rebase the last 3 commits:

  1. git rebase -i HEAD~3
  2. Leave the first "pick" and replace the rest by "squash" (or "s")
  3. Tidy up the commit message and save (:wq in vi).

🎯Fixup

Let say I want to add something in the commit fed14a4c

git commit --fixup 

git add .

git commit --fixup HEAD~1
# or replace HEAD~1 by the commit hash (fed14a4c)

git rebase -i HEAD~3 --autosquash
# save&quit the file (:wq in VI)

🕹Execute command on each commit when rebasing

For massives features, you might end up with a branch with a few commits inside. And then tests are failing and you want to identify the "guilty commit". You can use rebase --exec to execute a command on each commit of the history. 

# Will run "npm test" command on the last 3 commit ❤️
git rebase HEAD~3 --exec "npm run test"

rebase --exec

🦋Stash

Because it's not all about git stash and git stash pop ;) 

# save all tracked files
git stash save "your message"

# list your stashes
git stash list

# retrieve stash and delete
git stash apply stash@{1}
git stash drop stash@{1}
# ... or in 1 command
git stash pop stash@{1}

🗑 Clean

# remove branches that no longer exist on remote
git fetch -p

# remove all branch that contains "greenkeeper"
git fetch -p && git branch --remote | fgrep greenkeeper | sed 's/^.\{9\}//' | xargs git push origin --delete

🐙 GitHub = Git + Hub

I use Hub as a wrapper for git. To enable it you've to set hub as an alias for git (alias git='hub'). 

# Open browser and go to the repository url (GitHub only)
git browse

Other commands are available here.

🦄 Bonus: my favourite git aliases

alias g='git'
alias glog='git log --oneline --decorate --graph'
alias gst='git status'
alias gp='git push'
alias ga='git add'
alias gc='git commit -v'

# 🤘
alias yolo='git push --force'

# useful for daily stand-up
git-standup() {
    AUTHOR=${AUTHOR:="`git config user.name`"}

    since=yesterday
    if [[ $(date +%u) == 1 ]] ; then
        since="2 days ago"
    fi

    git log --all --since "$since" --oneline --author="$AUTHOR"
}

And you, what's your favourite git command?

Git