Git survival guide

There are lots of guides and documents on the internet, but there are too many and many are confusing. Here is a mini guide to use git with a minimal number of commands and parameters. You won't find any details or explanation of Git's internal mechanisms here.

Git guide

Remote Transfer or how to communicate with the world

• Get a fresh repository: git clone <remote path>
• Update current repository to latest: git fetch -v
• Update current repository with commit from a fork: git fetch -v <remote path> <branch>
• Send your new commit to the remote: git push <remote> <branch>

Commit or how to communicate with your local repository

• stage your change with dynamic selection: git add/rm -p <file>
• commit your change: git commit
• uncommit previous commit: git reset --soft HEAD~1
• unstage your change: git reset HEAD --
• discard your change forever with dynamic selection: git checkout -p -- <file>

Stash or how to save your precious work

Stash is very useful. For example, your will use it before/after (push/pop) merge/rebase action

• Push pending update on the stack: git stash
• Get back your update: git stash pop
• view content of your stash: git stash show -p stash@\{0\}

Rebase or how to screw the history

Never rebase commits that were pushed remotely. Rebase can be used to improve your current patch set, or to fast-forward-merge after a fetch. For better software engineering we never directly merge the upstream master when doing local development. When accepting a PR, we expect you to fetch the upstream master to your local repository, and rebase all the changes in your local branch on top of the upstream master.

• The rebase command: git rebase -i
• Cancel it : git rebase --abort
• Resolve conflict: git mergetool <file>
• Continue rebase: git rebase --continue

Branch or how to separate your work by feature

Please note that master is actually the default branch

• List branches: git branch -v
• Switch to another branch: git checkout <branch>
• Creates: git branch <branch>
• Delete branches: git branch -d <branch>
• Set the base reference of the branch (for rebase): git branch --set-upstream-to=<remote> <branch_name>

Git use case example

Branch management

Let's say you want to rebase your current branch topic-v1 to topic-v2 with new additions. Note: topic-v1 could also be master too.

• Go to current branch: git checkout topic-v1
• Create a new one: git branch topic-v2
• Go into the new branch: git checkout topic-v2
• Set the reference: git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master topic-v2
• Rebase: git rebase -i
• ...

Split commit

• Copy your repository if you're not confident with this kind of operation: cp -a <repository> <repository backup>
• Do a rebase: git rebase -i
• Use edit on the commit that you want to split ... rebase on-going...
• Uncommit: git reset --soft HEAD~1
• Unstage: git reset HEAD --

At this stage of operation, you get all your changes in the local files, but nothing is ready to be committed.

Repeat the 2 next commands for each new commits that you want to create

• Stage your change with dynamic selection: git add/rm -p <file>
• Commit your change: git commit

Once you have finished to split your commit:

• Finish the rebase: git rebase --continue