A general guide for the distributed version control system Git.

• Git cheatsheet

This guide shows the Git commands, but for ease of use these can be wrapped in shell functions. See Powershell Git.

git config --global user.name "Your Name Here"
git config --global user.email your@email.com
git config --global core.excludesFile ~/.gitignore
git config --global init.defaultBranch main

Check the configuration

git config --list

Start by initializing a new repo or cloning an existing one.

Since a project that is just starting tends to be rudimentary it makes sense to initially create the repo with an empty master branch and then immediately create a working branch where the initial work will begin. Once the project gets further along and hits certain milestones the changes can be merged into the master branch.

• --allow-empty allows a commit to the repo without any files added.

Below is an example using Powershell to only run commands if there is not an existing Git repo configured.

git-init.ps1

param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [String]$email
)
 
if (-not(Test-Path -Path ".\.git")) {
    git init --initial-branch=main
    git config --global user.name "John Doe"
    git config --global user.email $email
    git config --global core.excludesFile ~/.gitignore
    git commit --allow-empty -m "Initial commit for bootstrapping the repo"
    git checkout -b working
}

git-init.ps1 -email "jdoe@gmail.com"

.gitignore
.vscode
*.pyc
__pycache__/
**/.working/*

• Git Init

git remote add <remote name> <remote url>

git clone <url>

• Clone an existing repo or initialize a new one
• Edit some source code.
• Stage (new, changed and deleted) the changes.
• Commit to the local repo.
• Fetch changes from remote repo and merge them into working files.
• Push changes out to remote repo.

git diff HEAD
git add -u
git commit -m "wip"
git fetch
git merge <remote name>/<branch>
git push -u <remote name> <branch>
# Alternatively, push all branches
git push --all <remote name>

See what's new or modified in the working directory.

git status

List files that were part of the specified commit. Alias gls

git ls-tree --full-tree --name-only -r $commit

Show the details, including changes made, for the specified commit.

 git show $commit

See the changes between the current working directory and the last commit (HEAD) or some other commit (e.g. HEAD~1).

git diff HEAD

• git diff: Show differences between your working directory and the index.
• git diff –cached: Show differences between the index and the most recent commit.
• git diff HEAD: Show the differences between your working directory and the most recent commit.
• git diff –name-only <commit> <commit>: Show the files that changed between two commits.

git log

• Checkout the branch the new branch is based on
• Then create branch

git branch <new branch name>

• Create a ranch and check it out in one command

git checkout -b <new branch name>

• Delete remote branch, if it exists
• Then delete the local branch

git push -d <remote_name> <branch name>
git branch -d <branch name>

To force delete an unmerged branch

git branch -D <branch name>

Push branch to remote repo

git push -u <origin name> <branch name>

To tidy up a messy trail of commits

git reset --soft HEAD~n && git commit -m 'new commit message'
git push <remote> <branch> --force

git archive --format=zip -o $zip_file $commit [file(s) to archive]

Example wrapper function in Powershell

function git-extract([Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$commit, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$path) {
    $temp_file="$env:temp\git-dump.zip"; git archive -o $temp_file $commit; Expand-Archive -path $temp_file -destinationpath $path
}

$archive='c:\path\to\archive.zip';
git archive --format=zip <commit> <file(s)> -o $archive;
Expand-Archive $archive -DestinationPath 'c:\path\to\destination'

Using Powershell, extract the files from a specified commit to a destination folder.

param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [String]$commit,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [String]$DestPath
)
 
$archive="$env:temp\$([System.IO.Path]::GetRandomFileName()).zip"
git archive --format=zip $commit -o $archive
Expand-Archive -Path $archive -DestinationPath $DestPath -Force

git-extract head $env:temp\foobar

Get URL for remote repo.

git config --get remote.origin.url

• Github
• Powershell Git
• Conventional Commits
• Handy Git Commands