Quick reference

Other cheatsheets

Glossary

alias: With aliases you can define your own shortcuts for Git commands.
version control system: A system that records changes to a file or set of files over time so that you can recall specific versions later.
git: Implementation of a version control system. Currently the most popular one.
commit: As a verb, the process of recording more changes. As a noun, the name of the record of changes. A commit is identified by something such as 554c187.
working directory
workspace: the actual files you see and edit
staging area: Place files go after git add and before git commit
hash: Unique reference of any commit or state. Comes from hash functions such as MD5 or SHA1.
branch: One line of work. Different branches can exist at the same time and split/merge. Committing on a branch updates that branch.
tag: Like a branch in that it points to a commit for reference. It is designed to be permanent an not updated.
HEAD: Pointer to the most recent commit on the current branch.
remote: Roughly, another server that holds .git.
origin: Default name for a remote repository.
repository: One collection of files managed by Git. It contains entire history of all files managed by git. GitHub has one repository as one GitHub repository. VS Code has one repository as one directory you can open. The command line has one repository as one directory.
clone: As a verb, the process of making a copy of a repository locally. It brings in all history and all files. (As a noun, the copy that was made when cloning).
GitHub repository: The files from the Git repository, but also other things from GitHub such as access permissions, issues, and pull requests.
upstream: The original repository from which the code comes. If you fork the repository, it is your upstream and it is easy to send changes back to there.
fork: As a noun: a one person’s copy of a repository. As a verb: making that copy. As a verb on GitHub: Making a copy of a repository linked to the original. It is easy to send changes to the original
issue: Within a web repository like GitHub, discussion of a topic, for example a problem or improvement suggestion. These are a property of the web platform and not of the Git program itself.
pull request: A GitHub concept: change proposal. A proposal to merge one branch into another. Usually used to contribute code back to upstream.
push: Moving changes from your local copy to another copy
pull: Getting changes from another copy to your own copy. git pull does this fetch, and also tries to automatically merge.
master: Default name for main branch on Git. Depending on the configuration and service, the default branch is sometimes main. In this lesson we configure Git so that the default branch is called main to be more consistent with GitHub and GitLab.
main: Default name for main branch on GitLab and GitHub. In this lesson we configure Git so that the default branch is called main to be more consistent with GitHub and GitLab.
merge
merging: Bringing changes from one branch into another, either as a noun or verb.
VS Code: A text editor and development environment by Microsoft. It’s quite popular, partly because it is powerful and easy to use. VS Codium is the same but without Microsoft tracking.

Commands we use

Setup:

git config: edit configuration options
git init -b main: create new repository with main as the default branch

See our status:

git status: see status of files - use often!
git log: see history of commits and their messages, newest first
git graph: see a detailed graph of commits. Create this command with git config --global alias.graph "log --all --graph --decorate --oneline"
git diff: show difference between working directory and last commit
git diff --staged: show difference between staging area and last commit
git show COMMIT: inspect individual commits

General work:

git add FILE:
- Add a new file
- Add a file to staging
git commit: record a version, add it to current branch
git commit --amend: amend our last commit
git branch: show which branch we’re on
git branch NAME: create a new branch called “name”
git restore FILE: restore last committed/staged version of FILE, losing unstaged changes
git switch --create BRANCH-NAME: create a new branch and switch to it
git revert HASH: create a new commit which reverts commit HASH
git reset --soft HASH: remove all commits after HASH, but keep their modifications as staged changes
git reset --hard HASH: remove all commits after HASH, permanently throwing away their changes
git merge BRANCH-NAME: merge branch BRANCH-NAME into current branch
git grep PATTERN: search for patterns in tracked files
git annotate FILE: find out when a specific line got introduced and by whom
git bisect: find a commit which broke some functionality