Git cheatsheet for ninjas

January 08, 2016

One of my favourite parts of working with Mercurial for 2 years was its command line, and committing and updating through it. I’m using Git now rather than Mercurial, but the same principal still applies for me - command line first, and UI mainly for diffs. I prefered Mercurial’s diffing and branching but on the whole you can go between the two fairly effortlessly.

Below is a list of advanced Git usage I’m accrueing, largely thanks to the Git ninjas I work with, Stackoverflow and a tiny amount of self-discovery.

	# Change the config editor to notepad
	git config --global core.editor notepad

	# ...and then edit the config
	git config --global --edit

	# Revert master back by 5 commits
	git revert --no-commit HEAD~5..

	# Revert master back by 5, but do it so there you get a "Revert commit" for each commit you reverted (this opens Vim)
	git revert master~5..master

	# Display the last 3 commits as single lines, abbreviate the SHA
	git log -n 3 --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit

	# Find a commit e.g. delete
	new-alias grep select-string
	git log --format=oneline --abbrev-commit \| grep myfile.js

	# Ignore a file (that's been added prior to a .gitignore)
	git update-index --assume-unchanged path/to/file

	# Un-ignore that file
	git update-index --no-assume-unchanged path/to/file
	# Reset all staged checkins
	git reset --hard

	# Clean all unstaged checkins
	git clean -n

	# Clean all
	git clean -xcd

	# Turn all uncommitted changes into a new branch
	git checkout -b <branchname>

	# Find list of changes for a directory
	git log --name-status -10 path/to/dir

	# Remember usernames/passwords in Git extensions.
	# Add this to your .gitconfig file
	[credential]
	helper = !\"C:/Program Files (x86)/GitExtensions/GitCredentialWinStore/git-credential-winstore.exe\"

	# List all remote branches
	git remote show origin

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I'm Chris Small, a software engineer working in London. This is my tech blog. Find out more about me via Github, Stackoverflow, Resume