50 Git Commands That You Must Know For Your Next Project

Git is a distributed version control system that helps developers collaborate on projects of any scale. In this article, I will give you 50 Git commands that will help you in your future projects.

What Is Distributed Version Control System (GIT)?

A distributed version control system is a system that helps you keep track of changes you’ve made to files in your project.

Git has many different commands you can use. So I have written them down and thought it’d be nice to share them with the community. I hope you find them useful.

Check Your Git Configuration

The command below returns a list of information about your git configuration including user name and email:

git config -l

Setup Your Git Username

With the command below you can configure your user name:

git config --global user.name "Paul"

Setup your Git user email

This command lets you set up the user email address you’ll use in your commits.

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

Cache Your Login Credentials In Git

You can store login credentials in the cache so you don’t have to type them in each time. Just use this command:

git config --global credential.helper cache

Initialize A Git Repository

Everything starts from here. The first step is to initialize a new Git repo locally in your project root. You can do so with the command below:

git init

Add A File To The Staging Area In Git

The command below will add a file to the staging area. 

git add your_file_name

Add All Files Fn The Staging Area In Git

If you want to add all files in your project to the staging area, you can use a wildcard. and every file will be added for you.

git add .

Add only certain files to the staging area in Git

With the asterisk in the command below, you can add all files starting with ‘fil’ in the staging area.

git add fil*

Check the repository’s status in Git

This command will show the status of the current repository including staged, unstaged, and untracked files.

git status

Commit changes in the editor in Git

This command will open a text editor in the terminal where you can write a full commit message.

git commit

Commit changes with a message in Git

You can add a commit message without opening the editor. This command lets you only specify a short summary for your commit message.

git commit -m "your commit message here"

Commit changes and skip the staging area in Git

You can add and commit tracked files with a single command by using the -a and -m options.

git commit -a -m"your commit message here"

See your commit history in Git

This command shows the commit history for the current repository:

git log

See your commit history including changes in Git

git log -p

See a specific commit in Git

This command shows a specific commit. Replace commit-id with the id of the commit that you find in the commit log after the word commit.

git show commit-id

See log stats in Git

This command will cause the Git log to show some statistics about the changes in each commit, including line(s) changed and file names.

git log --stat

See changes made before committing them using diff in Git

You can pass a file as a parameter to only see changes on a specific file.
git diff shows only unstaged changes by default.

We can call diff with the –staged flag to see any staged changes.

git diff
git diff all_checks.py
git diff --staged

See changes using git add -p

This command opens a prompt and asks if you want to stage changes or not, and includes other options.

git add -p

Remove tracked files from the current working tree in Git

This command expects a commit message to explain why the file was deleted.

git rm filename

Rename files in Git

This command stages the changes, then it expects a commit message.

git mv oldfile newfile

Ignore files in Git

Create a .gitignore file and commit it.

Revert unstaged changes in Git

git checkout filename

Revert staged changes in Git

You can use the -p option flag to specify the changes you want to reset.

git reset HEAD filename
git reset HEAD -p

Amend the most recent commit in Git

git commit –amend allows you to modify and add changes to the most recent commit.

git commit --amend

Rollback the last commit in Git

git revert will create a new commit that is the opposite of everything in the given commit.
You can revert the latest commit by using the head alias like this:

git revert HEAD

Rollback an old commit in Git

You can revert an old commit using its commit id. This opens the editor so you can add a commit message.

git revert commit_id_here

Create a new branch in Git

By default, you have one branch, the main branch. With this command, you can create a new branch. Git won’t switch to it automatically – you will need to do it manually with the next command.

git branch new_branch_name

Switch to a new branch in Git

When you want to use a different or a newly created branch you can use this command:

git checkout your_branch_name

List branches in Git

You can view all created branches using the git branch command. It will show a list of all branches and mark the current branch with an asterisk and highlight it in green.

git branch

Create a branch in Git and switch to it immediately

In a single command, you can create and switch to a new branch right away.

git checkout -b branch_name

Delete a branch in Git

When you are done working with a branch and have merged it, you can delete it using the command below:

git branch -d branch_name

Merge two branches in Git

To merge the history of the branch you are currently in with the branch_name, you will need to use the command below:

git merge branch_name

Show the commit log as a graph in Git

You can use –graph to get the commit log to show as a graph. Also,
–oneline will limit commit messages to a single line.

git log --graph --oneline

Show the commit log as graph of all branches in Git

Does the same as the command above, but for all branches.

git log --graph --oneline --all

Abort a conflicting merge in Git

If you want to throw a merge away and start over, you can run the following command:

git merge --abort

Add a remote repository in Git

This command adds a remote repository to your local repository (just replace https://repo_here with your remote repo URL).

git add remote https://repo_here

See remote URLs in Git

You can see all remote repositories for your local repository with this command:

git remote -v

Get more info about a remote repo in Git

Just replace origin with the name of the remote obtained by
running the git remote -v command.

git remote show origin

Push changes to a remote repo in Git

When all your work is ready to be saved on a remote repository, you can push all changes using the command below:

git push

Pull changes from a remote repo in Git

If other team members are working on your repository, you can retrieve the latest changes made to the remote repository with the command below:

git pull

Check remote branches that Git is tracking

This command shows the name of all remote branches that Git is tracking for the current repository:

 git branch -r

Fetch remote repo changes in Git

This command will download the changes from a remote repo but will not perform a merge on your local branch (as git pull does that instead).

git fetch

Check the current commits log of a remote repo in Git

Commit after commit, Git builds up a log. You can find out the remote repository log by using this command:

git log origin/main

Merge a remote repo with your local repo in Git

If the remote repository has changes you want to merge with your local, then this command will do that for you:

git merge origin/main

Get the contents of remote branches in Git without automatically merging

This lets you update the remote without merging any content into the
local branches. You can call git merge or git checkout to do the merge.

git remote update

Push a new branch to a remote repo in git

If you want to push a branch to a remote repository you can use the command below. Just remember to add -u to create the branch upstream:

git push -u origin branch_name

Remove a remote branch in Git

If you no longer need a remote branch you can remove it using the command below:

git push --delete origin branch_name

Git rebase

You can transfer completed work from one branch to another using git rebase.

git rebase branch_name

Force Push Request in Git

This command will force a push request. This is usually fine for pull request branches because nobody else should have cloned them. But this isn’t something that you want to do with public repos.

git push -f