Git, Commands Cheat Sheet

Glossary

1. Git: A distributed version control system designed for tracking changes in source code during software development
2. Repository(repo):A data structure that stores metadata and objects for a Git Project, includes files, commit history, branches, and configuration settings
3. Commit: A snapshot of changes made to files in a repository at a specific point in time.
4. Staging: Preparing files before being committed to the repository. Staged files are the ones ready to be included in the next Commit
5. Branch: A branch allows developers to work on separate features or fixes in a parallel manner without affecting the main code base
6. Push: the action of uploading local commits from your local repository to a remote repository such as GitHub or GitLab or your own or your company’s hosted repositories.
7. Pull: The action of fetching the changes from a remote repository and merging them with your local repository.
8. Merge: The process of integrating changes from one branch into another branch
9. Conflict: A situation where Git cannot automatically merge changes from different branches due to conflicting modifications to the same file.
10. Clone: The action of creating a local copy of a remote repository to your machine

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COMMONLY USED COMMANDS

git clone [url]

Retrieve an entire repository from a remote/hosted location via URL

git status

Show which files are modified, untracked or staged commit.

git add [file] 
git add .

Adds the changes in a specific file(add [file]) or all modified files(add .) in the working directory or the staging area, preparing them for the next commit.

git commit -m "[commit message]"

Commits the staged changes to the local repository with a descriptive commit message explaining the changes made

git push

Pushes the committed changes from your local repository to the remote repository, keeping them synchronized.

git pull

Fetches changes from the remote repository and merges them to your local repository

git checkout [branch name]

Switches to the specific branch.

git merge [branch name]

Merges changes from the specified branch into the current branch

git log

Displays a chronological list of commits in the repository along with the messages, authors, timestamps, and commit IDs.

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source: github.com

SETUP & INIT

git config --global user.name "[firstname lastname]"

set a name that is identifiable for credit when review version history \

git config --global user.email "[valid-email]"

set an email address that will be associated with each history maker

git config --global color.ui auto

set automatic command line coloring for Git for easy reviewing

git init

initialize an existing directory as a Git repository

git clone [url]

retrieve an entire repository from a remote/hosted location via URL

STAGE & SNAPSHOT

git status