• How to show a pretty history log?
  • Log with date / time
• Commits
  • How to commit a message only when there are no local changes.
• How to undo/revert things?
  • Revert unstaged files
    • Undo/Revert local changes of one unstaged file
  • Undo/Revert all local unstaged files
  • Remove untracked files
  • Undo committed but unpushed
  • Remove whole git history
  • Reset a local branch
• Merging
  • Merging without commit ‘and’ without ‘fast forward’
  • Merging a branch into master using squash (without commit)
  • Merging master into branch by favouring the master’s changes (theirs) in case of conflict
  • How to abort an uncommitted merge
• Rename a branch
  • Inspecting branches
  • Deleting branches
    • Deleting a local branch
    • Deleting a remote branch
  • Tags
    • Push a single tag to remote
    • Fetch all remote tags
    • Delete local tag
    • Delete a remote tag
    • Push all tags to remote
• Show differences
  • Show the commits that are not yet pushed to the remote repository
  • Show the differences between a the local and the remote version

How to show a pretty history log?

Log with date / time

git log --pretty=format:"%h%x09%an%x09%ad%x09%s"

with color git log --pretty="%C(Yellow)%h %C(reset)%ad (%C(Green)%cr%C(reset))%x09 %C(Cyan)%an: %C(reset)%s"

Make alias:

git config --global alias.lg "log --color --graph --pretty=format:'%C(Yellow)%h %C(reset)%ad (%C(Green)%cr%C(reset))%x09 %C(Cyan)%an: %C(reset)%s'"

To remove the alias: git config --global --unset alias.lg

Commits

How to commit a message only when there are no local changes.

This comes in handy to avoid dummy commits.

git commit --allow-empty --only -m <a message>

How to undo/revert things?

If a file has both staged and unstaged changes, only the unstaged changes shown in git diff are reverted. Changes shown in git diff –staged stay intact.

Source: Stackoverflow

Revert unstaged files

Undo/Revert local changes of one unstaged file

git restore <path to file>

Undo/Revert all local unstaged files

git restore .

Remove untracked files

Use -n for a dry (test) run: git clean -nfd

Actual delete:

git clean -fd

Undo committed but unpushed

Delete the most recent commit, destroying the work you’ve done

git reset --hard HEAD~1

Source: Stackoverflow

Remove whole git history

[!IMPORTANT] These steps are final and will remove the full commit history for a >repo!!!!

Create a new orphan temporary branch:
git checkout --orphan tempbranch

Add all the files to the new temp branch:
git commit -m 'Initial commit'

Delete the main branch. The main will be gone!
git branch -D main

Rename/move the temp branch to main :
git branch -am main

Force push all these changes to the remote repo:
git push -f origin main

Reset a local branch

These steps explain how to reset a local branch to the version of the remote.

1. Go to the branch that needs to be reset.
   git checkout <the_branch>
2. Fetch the updates from the remote repository.
   git fetch origin
3. Reset the local branch. This resets the local branch to match exactly the remote branch. It will remove all local commits that were not pushed yet to the remote.
   git reset --hard origin/<the_branch>
   Note: don’t forget to prefix the branch name with the name of the remote repository which is mostly ‘origin’.

Merging

Merging without commit ‘and’ without ‘fast forward’

This is convenient to be able to inspect everything before the commit git merge <thebranchname> --no-commit --no-ff

Merging a branch into master using squash (without commit)

From master: git merge --squash feature/PBI_xxxx

This also merge the changes without commit so that it can be inspected and manually committed in one commit

Merging master into branch by favouring the master’s changes (theirs) in case of conflict

git merge --no-commit --no-ff --strategy-option theirs

The command will report on what has automatically been resolved in case of conflict.

See Git man for info about option --strategy-option theirs

--no-commit --no-ff has also been added to inspect the possible automatic conflicts before committing.

How to abort an uncommitted merge

git merge --abort

Rename a branch

1. Start by switching to the local branch which you want to rename:

git checkout <old_name>

1. Rename the local branch by typing:

git branch -m <new_name>

At this point, you have renamed the local branch. If you’ve already pushed the branch to the remote repository, perform the next steps to rename the remote branch.

1. Push the local branch and reset the upstream branch: `git push origin -u `

2. Delete the remote branch:

git push origin --delete <old_name>

Source: Stackoverflow

Inspecting branches

Small Gui tool to display the branches: gitk

or full command line git log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --all --abbrev-commit

To create an alias for this long command. For example git lol , you can type this (You have to type this only once!!): git config --global alias.lol "log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --all --abbrev-commit

Deleting branches

Deleting a local branch

git branch -d <branch-name>

_Note: Be careful with git branch -d, the branch will deleted and there is no way back.

Deleting a remote branch

git push origin --delete <branch-name>

Tags

Push a single tag to remote

git push origin <tag_name>

Fetch all remote tags

git fetch --all

Delete local tag

git tag -d <tag name>

Delete a remote tag

git push --delete origin <tagname>

Push all tags to remote

git push --tags

Show differences

Show the commits that are not yet pushed to the remote repository

Ensure to be on the branch you want to inspect. In this example it is ‘the_branch’.

git log origin/<the_branch>..HEAD

Note: don’t forget to prefix the branch name with the name of the remote repository which is mostly ‘origin’.

Show the differences between a the local and the remote version

Ensure to be on the branch you want to inspect. In this example it is ‘the_branch’.

git diff origin/<the_branch>..HEAD

Note: don’t forget to prefix the branch name with the name of the remote repository which is mostly ‘origin’.