Workflow for gitorious and github

Initial checkout:

   1 # Fork repo on gitorious/github
   2 # Pull repo from gitorious/github
   3 # Add remote for upstream, e.g.
   4 cd Spoon-Knife
   5 git remote add upstream git://github.com/octocat/Spoon-Knife.git
   6 git fetch upstream

When needing to merge upstream changes back into master:

   1 # Make sure we're in the branch we want to be in (i.e. master)
   2 git checkout master
   3 git fetch upstream
   4 # Merge from master branch of upstream into current branch
   5 git merge upstream/master

Cookbook

Delete remote branch

git push origin :name-of-remote-branch
# OR
git push origin --delete name-of-remote-branch

Reverting changes

Amend the previous commit that has not been propogated (i.e. undo it, then start a new one with the pending changes in the index):

git commit --amend -a -m "New commit message"

Undo a commit that has not been propagated:

git reset --soft HEAD^

just changes the repository without changing the files you've edited on disk. However:

git reset --hard HEAD^

will reset both repository and revert files.

Once a commit that has been propagated, there is no way to undo. However, the following will create a new commit undoing the previous commit's changes:

git revert HEAD

To only change a commit message for a commit that has not been propogated:

git commit --amend

Pull with rebase instead of merge

git pull --rebase

Configure a branch to always do a rebase instead of a merge:

git config branch.$BRANCH_NAME.rebase true

Enforce .gitignore

Remove files from the repository that should have been ignored by .gitignore:

git rm -r --cached .
git add .
git status
git commit -m ".gitignore is now working"

# Search commit log (i.e. messages) for given needle in all branches
git log --all --grep='needle'
# As above, but search reflog (much slower)
git log -g --grep='needle'
# Search contents of commits
git grep -F 'needle' $(git rev-list --all)
# Search contents of commit in a large repository
git rev-list --all | parallel -j4 -k -X git grep --color=always -F 'needle'
# Search branches (has problems)
git branch -a | tr -d \* | parallel -k git grep --color=always -iF 'needle'

Ignore whitespace bullshit

# Ignore white space when pulling or merging
git pull -Xignore-space-change
git merge -Xignore-space-change
git merge -Xignore-all-space

# Ignore white space changes when diff'ing
git diff --ignore-space-change

Rebase a branch

# Without having branch-you-want-to-rebase checked out
git rebase branch-you-want-to-rebase branch-to-rebase-from
# With having branch-you-want-to-rebase checked out
git checkout branch-you-want-to-rebase
git rebase branch-to-rebase-from

Rebase off a branch that itself had been rebased (keep the un-rebased branch around as old-branch-to-rebase-from):

git rebase --onto branch-to-rebase-from old-branch-to-rebase-from branch-you-want-to-rebase

If you want to rebase but get updated stamps (do this independently of reordering/merging commits with git rebase -i:

git rebase --ignore-date

Per-repository user settings

git config user.name 'Samat K Jain'
git config user.email 'nobody@example.com'

Cleaning

# Discard all unstaged changes in CWD
git checkout -- .
# Remove untracked files and directories, dry run. `-n` for dry run.
git clean -df -n

GPG Signing

   1 # GPG sign all previous commits. Careful!
   2 git filter-branch -f --commit-filter 'git commit-tree -S "$KEY_ID"' HEAD

Submodules

Cloning a project w/ submodules

First clone:

git clone --recurse-submodules …

If you forgot --recurse-submodules, can run:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Adding submodules to a project

git submodule add $REPOSITORY_URL $TARGET_DIRECTORY

You need to start tracking the new .gitmodules file (just like .gitignore), as well as a "file" representing the submodule. git status will show it was $TARGET_DIRECTORY.

Update submodules

Go to each submodule, fetch, and update:

git submodule update --remote --recursive

The new .gitsubmodule

Will be done with a git pull automatically if submodule.recurse option is True.

Misc

Tell git to track a specific branch of a submodule, e.g. "master":

git config -f .gitmodules submodule.NameOfSubModule.branch master

Interesting reading

The Git Parable: Describes building a system like git, from the ground-up

CIA's git tips & tricks sheet is interesting, and oddly similar to this one.


CategoryCheatSheet