Quick cheat sheet of commonly used git commands that I’d otherwise have to keep Googling to remember

Rebase your branch to the latest master

If your current branch was branched off of master and you want to pull the latest updates pushed to master since then:

git pull --rebase origin master

Pull a branch other than the one you're on

For example, if you're not on the master branch but want to pull and merge master

git fetch origin master:master

Committing Changes

Merge changes with last commit

git commit --amend --no-edit

Squash commits

To squash the last four commits into one, do the following:

git rebase -i HEAD~4

or

git rebase -i [hash of commit before the one last one you want to squash]

In the list that shows up, replace the word “pick” with “squash” or “s” next to all but the oldest commit you’re squashing.

Then, to change the timestamp of the resulting commit:

git commit --amend --reset-author --no-edit

Set the date of the last commit to right now

You may want to do this after you’ve squashed some commits

git commit --amend --no-edit --date "$(date)"

Editing commits

Edit a commit in your history

Say you have commits: A -> B -> HEAD and you want to edit B:

Do:

  1. git rebase -i B~. note the tilda is important, you want to point to the commit before B
  2. In the opened file, go to the commit in the list that you want to edit and change pick to edit. Save and close the file
  3. Make the edits you want, save them, stage them
  4. Do git commit --all --amend --no-edit. This amends the last commit (B)
  5. Type git rebase --continue

More details at: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1186549/21539

Insert a commit in your history

Same as Editing a commit in your history, except for in step 4 do a normal commit, not an --amend. This'll add your change as a new commit. Then continue the rebase.

More details at: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32315197/21539

Undoing/Reverting Changes

Discard all local changes to tracked files

git reset --hard

Discard all local changes to a single unstaged file

git checkout --[file]

Discard changes to all untracked/unstaged files. This cannot be undone

# first run 'git clean -n' to get a preview of what will be deleted
git clean -f

Discard all local changes

Combine the above to get:

git reset --hard
git clean -f

Revert/Undo an Entire Commit

Note: this leaves the commit in the branch history

git revert [commit-id]

Revert/Undo changes to a single file in a commit

This will undo the changes to a single file from the given commit id.

The edited file will be unstaged.

git show [commit-id] -- [file] | git apply -R

Set your branch head to the remote branch’s head

Use when you want to discard any local changes and start over from the remote branch state

# Replace 'origin/master' with your desired remote branch or 
#   the specific CL you want to set the HEAD to
git reset --hard origin/master

Pull a new remote branch to your existing repo

For when you want to pull a new branch from your repo origin. You can replace ‘origin’ with your desired remote branch if you’re using something different

git checkout --track origin/[branch_name]

For more details see this article

Rebase your branch to a different parent branch

If your current branch was forked from one branch, but you instead want to have you changes applied on top of a different branch

From the branch that you want to rebase run:

git rebase --onto [desired_parent_branch] [current_parent_branch]

More details here

Changing the Branch HEAD

To change the current branch’s head to a different commit

This can be used as a form of undo to remove commits from the dependency tree

git reset --hard [commit-id]
git push -f # This line changes the head on the remote branch as well

Finding SHA ids for old branch heads

git reflog lets you see what individual local branches used to point to on your box

Create a New Branch from Current Branch

git checkout -b [newBranchName]

And then to push that branch to a remote repository:

git push -u origin [newBranchName]

Diffing Changes

Key thing to note is that appending ~ to the end of a commit makes it refer to its parent. Appending ~N instead makes it refer to it’s Nth parent

Diffing the last commit

git diff HEAD~ HEAD

Diffing a specific commit

git diff [commitId]~ [commitId] #e.g. git diff f23a4s~ f23a4s

Diffing the last N commits

git diff HEAD~N HEAD # e.g diff last 4 commits: git diff HEAD~4 HEAD

Pretty Git Log printout

Add the following to your git config file to enable pretty logs (based on work by Filipe Kiss)

alias.lg=!git lg1
alias.lg1=!git lg1-specific
alias.lg2=!git lg2-specific
alias.lg3=!git lg3-specific
alias.lgs=!git lg1 — simplify-by-decoration
alias.lg1s=!git lg1-specific — all — simplify-by-decoration
alias.lg2s=!git lg2-specific — all — simplify-by-decoration
alias.lg3s=!git lg3-specific — all — simplify-by-decoration
alias.lg1-specific=log — graph — abbrev-commit — decorate — format=format:’%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) — %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset) %C(white)%s%C(reset) %C(dim white)- %an%C(reset)%C(auto)%d%C(reset)’
alias.lg2-specific=log — graph — abbrev-commit — decorate — format=format:’%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) — %C(bold cyan)%aD%C(reset) %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset)%C(auto)%d%C(reset)%n’’ %C(white)%s%C(reset) %C(dim white)- %an%C(reset)’
alias.lg3-specific=log — graph — abbrev-commit — decorate — format=format:’%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) — %C(bold cyan)%aD%C(reset) %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset) %C(bold cyan)(committed: %cD)%C(reset) %C(auto)%d%C(reset)%n’’ %C(white)%s%C(reset)%n’’ %C(dim white)- %an <%ae> %C(reset) %C(dim white)(committer: %cn <%ce>)%C(reset)’

With the above in your git config file you can just enter the below to see your history:

git lg

Or to limit history to just the past N commits:

git lg -[# of commits]  # Example: git lg -5