Git-Branching Tutorial Notes

I tried this awesome tutorial Learn Git Branching and wanted to write down this cheat sheet. Git has a lot of commands and one can easily forget some of them. So lets write them down!

• git branch <b_name> [ref]: creates branch at [ref]. [ref] is optional and can be commit,hash, branch name or tag. If ommited it is HEAD
• git checkout <commit_hash> : moves HEAD, may cause detached HEAD
• git checkout -b <branch_name: git branch <branch_name> + git checkout <branch_name>
• git rebase <branch_name> [current_branch]: changes parent of current_branch to branch_name. current_branch is HEAD by deafult. While doing that applies all commits in the current_branch to the target_branch.
• git checkout <b_name>^^: 2 commit above b_name. You can use these to remove uncommitted changes.
• git checkout <b_name>~x: x commit above b_name. (x being int)
• git branch -f master HEAD~3: moves the branch to a commit(3 commit above HEAD) by force!
• git reset HEAD^: resets the current branch to previous commit. Basically removes the last commit. Use this if your commits are local and haven’t shared with people.
• git revert HEAD~4: undos the changes and brings back(4 commit above) previous commit as a new commit. Use this if you previous commits are shared(pushed)
• git cherry-pick [<c_hash>]+: takes the commit/s and applies them to the current branch. You can use them to pick the commits, necessarry for the task (like only the bug fix commit)
• git rebase -i HEAD~4: rebase by reordering, squasing or excluding commits. You can use them to pick the commits, necessarry for the task (like only the bug fix commit)
• git commit --amend: updates the current commit with staged differences.
• git tag <t_name> <c_name>: tags a specific commit in the history permanently. If <c_name> ommited tags HEAD.
• git describe <ref>: returns how far you are from the closest tag. <ref>can be commit hash, branch name or tag

Part 2: Remotes

• git fetch: sync’s remote/branch with the remote. In other words downloads and updates ALL the branches from remote. E.g. updates origin/master.
• git pull: git fetch (the remote of the current branch) + git merge (with the current branch )
• git fetch; git rebase origin/master; git push: when there is work done in remote and you also committed and you wanted to push and failed. Then you need to get the work first and rebase/merge first. Shortcut git pull or git pull --rebase.
• git checkout -b foo o/master: creates a new branch and checsout there and connects remote branch with the new one. So now when you pull origin/master is merged with foo. Similarly, when you push from foo it goes to remote/master.
• git branch -u origin/master foo same as above. you can omit foo if you are currently checked out there.
• git push origin foo you don’t need to checkout there, you can just specify. So whatever foo’s correspondace at the remote origin is it is pushed from wherever you want.
• git push origin <source>:<destination>: this enables to push any branch to any brach in origin. source destination is any kind of ref. Like HEAD^
• git fetch origin foo: very similar to push, wherever you are do the fetch from origin to the foo branch.
• git fetch origin <source>:<destination>: similar to push but now opposite direction source is in the remote. You don’t need to specify the remote origin/branch here you can fetch to the branch if it is safe to do so. If destination doesn’t exist, the branch is created for you.
• git push origin :<destination>: removes destination
• git fetch origin :<destination>: removes destination

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