I’ve dipped my toes in the Git waters for over 10 years. I must confess that I never really grokked it. It might be that I never worked in a multi-user repo environment with Git. Or it might be that working with it for one month every year wasn’t enough to make it stick. So I decided to make my life easier with a Cheat Sheet(s).
View Branches
Use these command variants to get branch information.
| Local branches | git branch |
| Remote branches | git branch -r |
| All branches | git branch -a |
For full information regarding your branch origin, fetch/push URLs, and other information, try this.
PS> git remote show origin
View Remote Repositories
View all remote repositories and their full URLs for fetching and pushing.
| Just get repo names | git remote |
| Get repo names and URLs | git remote -v |
Save your Work before a Major Change
Ever want to just save your work off before you do something that can really screw up your work? Try this but remember to clean up later.
PS> git commit -a -m "Saving my work, just in case" PS> git branch my-saved-work
Clean up later with a simple branch delete.
# Delete branch after it has been MERGED TO REMOTE REPO. PS> git branch -d my-saved-work # Delete branch if it HAS NOT BEEN MERGED TO REMOTE REPO. # (We can use "--delete --force" or shortcut "-D" PS> git branch -D my-saved-work # Delete branch from remote repo. PS> push origin -d my-saved-work
Delete Untracked Files from Working Tree
Git clean can be a very handy command to delete untracked files. But it also is dangerous so be sure and use the -n (dry run) option first.
git clean [-d] [-f] [-i] [-n] [-q] [-e <pattern>] [-x | -X] [--] <path>…
| Dry run | git clean -n |
| Interactive mode | git clean -i |
| Remove untracked files and folders | git clean -fd |
Move File to another Folder
The process is to create the new folder if necessary then execute the git mv filename new_folder command.
PS> git mv .\DevBuild.targets ..\..\MSBuild\Targets PS> git commit -m "Moved file to Targets"
Reset Local Branch to Remote Repo HEAD
Depending on your exact goal, this can have multiple steps. This is the approach where you want to use if you just want to set your branch to the point it was when you branched it last. If in doubt, you might want to save your work first.
PS> git fetch origin PS> git reset --hard origin/master
Git Fetch
Downloads the remote changes but does NOT update your local working folders. This is safer than git pull.
Git Pull
Very related to git fetch but as a second step, it will perform a git merge to create a merge commit. This could result in conflicts and starts the merge conflict resolution flow.
Git Push
This is the command to upload local repo content to the remote repo.
Git Sync
This function is not a true git command. Instead it is a shortcut used in Visual Studio (and other apps) to make the two step process of updating your local files and pushing your local changes to the remote repo. It performs the following commands: get pull then get push.
Git Add and Git Reset
To add files to the staging area, use the Add command. You can specify single files or multiple files.
PS> git add <file> PS> git add *.cs
To remove a file that you do not want to be part of the staged files, use the Reset command.
PS> git reset <file> PS> git reset *.cs
To remove all files from the staging area, use the Reset command with no parameters.
PS> git reset
Rename Git Branch
1. Checkout local branch you want to rename.
PS> git checkout <old_name>
2. Rename the local branch.
PS> git branch -m <new_name>
3. If the old name exists in the remote repository because you have already push content, rename the branch to the new name.
PS> git push origin -u <new_name>
4. Again – if the old name exists in the remote repository because you have already push content, delete the old name.
PS> git push origin --delete <old_name>
Delete Local Branches
PS> git branch -d <local_branch>
If Git refuses to delete the branch, it might be because there are unmerged commits in the branch. To force a delete, use the capital D – and be careful this is really what you want to do.
PS> git branch -D <local_branch>
Delete Remote Branches
PS> git push origin --delete <remote_branch_name>