Git

Git is an open-source distributed version control system. It is designed to handle minor to major projects with high speed and efficiency. It is developed to co-ordinate the work among the developers. The version control allows us to track and work together with our team members at the same workspace. Its goals include speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.

GitHub

GitHub is a web-based Git repository hosting service, which offers all of the distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git as well as adding its own features.

I'm sharing a *cheatsheet* which features the most important & commonly used Git commands for easy reference.

Let's get started...

Setup

Configuring user information used across all local repositories.

git config --global username "[firstname lastname]"

• set a name that is identifiable for credit when review version history
  

git config --global user-email "[valid-gmail]"

• set an email address that will be associated with each history marker

git config --global color.ui auto

• set automatic command line coloring for Git for easy reviewing

Setup & Init

Configuring user information, initializing and cloning repositories

git init

• initialize existing directory as a Git repository

git clone [url]

• retrieve an entire repository from a hosted location via URL

Stage & Snapshot

Working with snapshots and the Git stagging area

git status

• show modified files in working directory, staged for your next commit

git add [file]

• add a file as it looks now to your next commit (stage)

git reset [file]

• unstage a file while retaining the changes in working directory

git diff

• diff what is changed but not staged

git commit -m "[descriptive message]"

• commit your staged content as a new commit snapshot

Writing good commit message is a skill. Let's understand this.

feat - a new feature fix - a bug fix

docs - changes in documentation

style - everything related to styling

refactor - code changes that neither fixes a bug or adds a feature

test - everything related to testing

chore - updating build tasks, package manager configs, etc

Branch & Merge

Isolating work in branches, changing context, and integrating changes

git branch -a

• list all branches

git branch [branch-name]

• create a new branch at the current commit

git checkout

• switch to another branch and check it out into your working directory

git merge [branch]

• merge the specified branch's history into the current one

Share & Update

Retrieving updates from another repository and updating local repos

git remote add [alias] [url]

• add a git URL as an alias

git fetch [alias]

• fetch down all the branches from that Git remote

git merge [alias] [branch]

• merge a remote branch into your current branch to bring it up to date

git push [alias] [branch]

• transmit local branch commits to the remote repository branch

git pull

• fetch and merge any commits from the tracking remote branch

Temporary Commits

Temporary store modified, tracked files in order to change branches

git stash

• save modified and staged changes

git stash list

list stack-order of stashed file changes

git stash pop

• write working from top of stash stack

git stash drop

• discard the changes from top of stash stack