Advanced and Useful Git Notes

4 min readJun 25, 2023

Add alias:

git config --global alias.ac '!git add -A && git commit -m'

List remote repos

git remote

Get the URL for the remote repo (origin)

git remote get-url origin

1. Git logging

Log the last 3 commits

git log -3

Beautiful log

git log --graph --decorate --oneline

Search log with the text “Search string”

git log -S "Search string"
or
git rev-list --all | xargs git grep -F ‘’

Log with changed file names

git log --name-only

Log commits before the date and from author ‘nagibaba’

git log -n 1 -before=”01–04–2022" -author=”nagibaba”

See changes since 3 weeks ago

git log --no-merges --raw --since='3 weeks ago'

Search logs by commit messages:

git log — grep=’pattern’ --pretty=oneline

See the changes over time for a file

git log -p path/to/file/filename

See your git history as a graph

git log --pretty=format:”%cn committed %h on %cd”

Nagibaba committed 400e4b7 on Fri Jun 24 12:30:04 2014 -0500.

Log format main placeholders

%h
abbreviated commit hash

%an
author name

%ae
author email

%ah
author date, human style 

%cn
committer name

%ce
committer email

%cd
committer date

%ch
committer date, human style 

%b
body

Log all changes to a specific file.

git log --all -- path/to/file/filename

Log your actions

git reflog

Log commits included in branch1 that aren’t included in branch2

git log branch1 ^branch2

2. Stash

Add your changes to the stash to take later. Useful when you change the branch.

Stash last changes

git stash [-u, -a]
[-u for untracked and tracked files]
[-a for ignored, untracked, and tracked files]

List stash objects

git stash list

Take prior changes from the stash and remove them from the stash list(Popping).

git stash pop

or

git stash pop stash@{1} (to pop the second stash)

Add to stash with message

git stash push -m "Ordinary changes"

Take stash without removing it from the list

git stash apply stash@{1}

3. Checkout

To the previous branch

git checkout -

Switch to a branch.

git checkout <branchName>

Create a new branch from the current branch

git checkout -b <branchName>

Get a file from another branch

git checkout origin/master -- path/to/file/filename

Remove changes to a specific file

git checkout -- path/to/file/filename

Create a local branch from the remote repository

git fetch --all
git checkout <branchName>

4. Reset

Remove changes from staging and keep them in the index.

git reset

or 

git reset HEAD

Remove from staging and index

git reset --hard

Remember

--soft keeps in staging, --hard removes from all areas.

Remove the last commit and keep the changes in the index

git reset HEAD~1

Remove commits after the last common commit with the master

git reset origin/master

Remove commits after a specific hash and save them in the index

git reset 0219bbee

5. Branch

Show local branches

git branch [-a, -r]
[-a to see remote branches too]
[-r to see only the remote branches]

Remove a branch

git branch -D <branch-name>

Search branches

git branch --all | grep <searchText>

Search for all branches that contain a specific commit

git branch -a --contains <commit-hash>

Find branches that are merged into master

git branch --merged master

View a file of another branch

git show master:thefile.js

Tip: I’d consider using it this way

# Fetch all branches to origin
git fetch --all
# See the file in the master branch of the origin
git show origin/master:thefile.js

Remove a remote branch

git push origin --delete <remote_branchname>

Rename a branch

git branch -m <new-branch-name>

6. Commit

Add and commit (Only for tracked files)

git commit -am "message"

Edit the last commit and add staged files to it

git commit --amend -m <commit message>

List files changed in a commit

git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r <commit-hash>

Undo a commit

git revert <commit-hash>

Reword the last commit

git commit -v --amend

Get the commit from another branch (Warning: The hash changes)

git cherry-pick <commit-hash>

# Get the last commit of a branch
git cherry-pick master

Add changes to the last commit (HEAD)

git add .
git commit --amend --no-edit

7. Diff

Diff of the index to the HEAD (The last commit)

git diff

See the diff in the stage

git diff --cached

Find text on the stage


git diff-index --cached -Ssearchtext HEAD

See the difference with another branch (master)

git diff master [--name-only]

See the difference between two branches

git diff branch1..branch2

8. Find and blame

Find who did changes in a file

git blame README.md

Using bisect you can detect the commit that started a bug

git bisect start                    # Start the search 
git bisect bad                      # Set the point to the bad commit 
git bisect good v1.3.0.             # Set the point to the good commit|tag 
git bisect bad                      # Inform that the current state is bad 
git bisect good                     # Inform that the current state is good 
git bisect reset                    # Finish the search

Pls, clap and share, if you liked the article.

Take a look at other posts: