Git Cheatsheet Prime

October 13, 2024

I’m an enthusiast and daily user of git’s command line interface ¹. While GUIs offer advantages in visualization and intuition², they greatly fall short in power³, concision, and extensibility.

Like vim, learning to use git (or any other CLI tool with lots of input options) has a steep learning curve⁴ and many little shortcuts and conveniences that left out of tutorials and references⁵ (because they’re not necessary for baseline usage), and thus never learned⁶.

This post (much like my vim one) includes the git subcommands (and options) I use on a regular basis, and their abbreviations (bash aliases) (which is how I use them).

I don’t claim to be a master of git, and this list is far from complete, but it offers a wider range than the github one, and can be used as a richer starting point (for beginners) or as a sparse expansion pack (for everybody else).

I intend for it to evolve over time, as I uncover better ways of doing these things.

Commands

Commands With Abbreviations (The Most Frequent Ones)

(Key:

• bash_alias — full_command — explanation

)

• gs — git status — ubiquitous
• gd — git diff — diff
• gds — git diff --staged — sanity-check after staging
• g — git — saves two keystrokes for non-abbreviated commands
• gb — git branch — ubiquitous
• gbd — git branch -d — delete a branch
• gbdf — git branch -D — force-delete a branch
• gsw — git switch — switch to given branch
• gswc — git switch -c — create a new branch and switch to it
• gsh — git show — shows a commit’s diff (…sometimes)
• gc — git commit — list commit history
• gca — git commit --amend — create a new commit off of head^, including the changes in head
• gl — git log — ubiquitous
• glg — git log --graph — ascii commit graph
• glgo — git log --graph --oneline — ascii commit graph, minimal boilerplate
• glmd — git log --remerge-diff — ascii commit graph, minimal boilerplate
• ga — git add — ubiquitous
• gai — git add -i — interactive add (add partial files)
• gp — git push — ubiquitous
• gpff — git push --force — set remote branch to match local
• gpf — git push --force-with-lease — safer force-push (requires fetch)
• gf — git fetch — download (but don’t merge) from remote
• gpl — git pull — download and merge remote branch
• gm — git merge — ubiquitous
• grb — git rebase — ubiquitous
• grbi — git rebase -i — interactive rebase
• gcp — git cherry-pick — ubiquitous
• gcpc — git cherry-pick --continue — continue after conflict/fixup/etc
• grl — git reflog — list previous values of HEAD
• gbs — git bisect — binary search to find when a bug was introduced
• gr — git reset — ubiquitous
• grh — git reset --hard — ubiquitous
• grs — git restore — scrap unstaged changes
• grss — git restore --staged — unstage changes
• gmb — git merge-base — find the least-common-ancestor of two commits

Other Commands

• git init — create new blank repository
• git clone — download repository from given url
• git revert — create a new commit that undoes the changes of the given commit
• git blame — list a file and the users/commits who last modified its lines
• git stash [push|pop|list|drop|apply|...] — temporary-commits
• git rm — remove a file, locally and in the git repository
• git mv — move a file, locally and in the git repository
• git difftool — use vimdiff to visualize diffs
• git mergetool — use vimdiff to resolve merge conflicts

Idioms

• git commit — use the default behavior (enter message in text editor) instead of -m⁷
• git switch - — switch to the last-switched-from branch
• git switch -c <name> [<parent>] — switch to a new branch off of parent (or HEAD, by default)
• git reset --hard @~ — hard-reset to HEAD’s parent
• git log -S <string> — “Pickaxe”: list commits whose diffs include the given string

Tricks

Locally ignore a file that is tracked by git:

• git update-index --assume-unchanged <file> — ignore changes to file
• git update-index --no-assume-unchanged <file> — undo the above

Setting up worktrees for a repository:

• (TODO)
• I haven’t gotten into worktrees yet, or used them enough to flesh this out
• But it would be a crime not to mention them.
• See: blog video docs

Revision Specifiers

(the docs for this have a pretty low opportunity cost)

• HEAD, @ — HEAD (current “active” commit)
• <rev>^<n> — nth merge parent of rev
• <rev>^ — parent of rev
• <rev>~<n> — nth generational parent of rev
• <rev>~ — parent of rev

An elucidating example of ^ and ~ from the docs:

G   H   I   J
 \ /     \ /
  D   E   F
   \  |  / \
    \ | /   |
     \|/    |
      B     C
       \   /
        \ /
         A
A =      = A^0
B = A^   = A^1     = A~1
C =      = A^2
D = A^^  = A^1^1   = A~2
E = B^2  = A^^2
F = B^3  = A^^3
G = A^^^ = A^1^1^1 = A~3
H = D^2  = B^^2    = A^^^2  = A~2^2
I = F^   = B^3^    = A^^3^
J = F^2  = B^3^2   = A^^3^2

Ranges

• <rev>^..<rev> — inclusive range (kind of)⁸

The following git_alias function lives in my bashrc. It sets up a bash abbreviation with git tab-completion. There’s probably a cleaner way to do it, but this works.

#!/bin/bash
git_alias() {
    alias "$1"="git $2"
    if (($# >= 3)) then
        __git_complete "$1" "$3"
    fi
}

git_alias g "" __git_main
git_alias gs status _git_status
git_alias gd diff _git_diff
git_alias gds "diff --staged" _git_diff
# ...