How do I change the upstream repository's url? How do I see the diff between staged changes and commits? Here are the 27 most common git commands along with explanations of each, ready for you to copy and paste into the terminal.

git init

Initializes the current directory as a git repo

git init
bash

git clone

Copy the repository i.e. username/project into a new folder called project:

git clone https://github.com/username/project.git
cd project
bash

Copy username/project into a new folder called my-project

git clone https://github.com/username/project.git my-project
cd my-project
bash

git status

Shows the status of the working tree

git status
bash

For a less verbose alternative, add -s for short or -sb if you want to include the branch too:

git status -sb
bash

git pull

# Fetches the changes from the remote and merge it into local repo
git pull origin master
bash

git add

Adds the file(s) to the index, which will be committed when you run git commit. Also called "staging".

git add script.js
bash

That will stage the script.js file. To add all files:

git add .
bash

This will ignores the files listed in .gitignore

git commit

Commits the changes to the local repository:

git commit -m "my commit message"
bash

Instead of adding a new commit, this will add the changes to the most recent commit:

git commit --amend
bash

git log

Shows the latest commit logs

git log
bash

git diff

Shows the changes between unstaged files (what's currently in your local project) and what's been committed:

git diff
bash

Shows the changes between staged (after running git add) files and what's been committed:

git diff --staged
bash

git remote

A "remote" is a version of your code that's stored on the internet. By default if you create a Github repository it will be called "origin". Typically when you fork a repository, the main repo is called the "upstream" repo and has read-only access, and you commit changes to your local version "origin", which can be merged into the upstream repo with a pull request.

To list the remotes:

git remote -v
bash

Add a remote

git remote add [remote name] [remote url]

git remote add upstream https://github.com/mainOrganization/project.git
bash

Change a remote's url

git remote add [remote name] [new url]

git remote set-url upstream https://github.com/main-organization/project.git
bash

git checkout

Change to a branch. This will change your local filesystem to have what's on that branch.

git checkout my-branch
bash

Create a new branch and check it out:

git checkout -b new-feature
bash

To do this you can't have unsaved changes that will conflict with the branch you're changing to. To revert the unsaved changes on your current branch:

git checkout .
bash

To remove the unstaged changes for a particular file:

git checkout -- script.js
bash

git push

Pushes the local changes (commits) to the remote repository. This will push the main branch to the remote called origin:

git push origin main
bash

If the remote repository has commits that your local repo doesn't have, you'll need to pull the changes from the remote first.

If you're a bad boy, you can force push with -f which will replace the remote's files with whatever you've committed.

git push -f origin master
bash

Push and set the remote as upstream

This is the same as git push --set-upstream origin my-branch

git push -u origin my-branch
bash

git branch

git branch will list your branches.

To delete a local branch:

git branch -d my-branch
bash

If the branch you're trying to delete hasn't been merged, you'll need to toss an additional --force flag.

If you have a lot of local branches, use this snippet to delete the local branches that have already been merged to the main branch.

git clean

Removes all the files and directories that are not yet tracked by git:

git clean -fd
bash

git merge

Merges other-branch into the current branch:

git merge other-branch
bash

git reset

This will remove all the changes to the tracked files that have not yet been committed:

git reset --hard
bash