Common Git commands

As mentioned, these commands assume the point of view of the HEAD pointer. There are far more commands available, as documented here.

Key commands

To initialise a new local repository:

git init

To add (stage) all files:

git add .

To map the current local repo to a remote repo:

git remote add origin referenceToUpstream

To commit changes (after the current HEAD pointer) with a message:

git commit -m 'insert your commit message here'

To push commits upstream, to the master branch use:

git push

To push commits upstream to a non-master branch, use:

git push -u origin branchName

To get the status of the current repo:

git status

To get more specifics about which lines of code have changed (+ will mean new lines added, - will mean existing lines that were removed):

git diff

If you are working on a non-master branch and want to compare to the master (or any other by valid name) branch, use:

git diff master

To get the names of the branches on your local machine:

git branch

To check out an existing branch:

git checkout existingBranch

To create a new branch and then check out that branch:

git checkout -b newBranch

To merge the last commit of the named branch (below as “branchName”) to that pointed to be HEAD:

git merge branchName

To undo a merge:

git merge --abort

To retrieve the status of updates available on the upstream (code is downloaded but not made part of the local repo):

git fetch origin branchName

To compare the differences between the most recent fetch and an upstream branch, use:

git diff origin/remoteBranchName

To pull changes (this is the same as fetch + merge) from a specific upstream branch (defaults to master otherwise), use:

git pull origin branchName

GitIgnore files list other files that are neither staged nor committed. To add a file or directory to the .gitignore file:

git rm --cached fileOrDirectoryName

The parameter --cached instructs Git to leave the file on the local system and only add the reference to gitignore.

To stash the current updates:

git stash

To stash with a message:

git stash save 'insert your message here'

To list all stashed work:

git stash list

To get the first element (files stashed last):

git stash pop

To select a specific n-th stashed element by the index:

git stash apply stash@{n}

To reset commits up to a given previous commit:

git reset --hard previousCommitHash

To revert up to a given previous commit:

git revert previousCommitHash