Basic Git Commands for Daily Use

2022-04-05

Working areas

• Working Directory -- The checked out files, as they are sitting on disk in the git repository directory.
• Staging Area -- The files and changes which were added with git add and may be committed.
• Local Repository -- The commits sitting on the hidden .git folder on your local machine.
• Remote Repository -- The commits stored on the remote machine, which is usually named origin.

Creating a new repository

• git init -- Creates a new git repository on the current directory.
• git init --bare -- Creates a new bare git repository on the current directory. A bare repository does not have a working folder, but changes can be pushed into it. Useful for self-hosting git repositories on a VM.
• git clone <repo URL> -- Clones a given repo and sets its URL as the origin remote for pulling and pushing.

Switching branches

• git checkout master -- Switch to the local master branch.
• git checkout <branch name> -- Switch to an existing local branch.
• git checkout -b <branch name> -- Create and switch to a new local branch.

Staging changes

• git status -- Shows the current branch and lists all modified files in the working directory.
• git add . -- Add all the changes in the current directory and its subdirectories (convenient, but frowned upon since it can lead to committing unintended files).
• git add <file1> ... <fileN> -- Add the changes to the listed files. (recommended).
• git diff --staged -- Shows a diff with all the staged changes.

Committing changes

• git commit -m "<message>" -- Creates a local commit with the staged changes.
• git commit -- Opens an editor for editing the commit message. If the commit message file is saved, creates a local commit with the staged changes.

Undoing changes

• git restore <file1> ... <fileN> -- Undoes the changes to the listed files on the working directory.
• git reset HEAD~1 -- Undoes the last commit.

Merging/Syncing changes

• git pull --all -- Pulls the latest commits for all branches from the origin remote.
• git push -- Pushes the latest commits of the current local branch to the origin remote.
• git merge master -- Creates a commit on the current local branch which merges/applies the latest changes from the local master branch.