Git Notes & Reference Guide

Install Git, verify your version, initialize repositories, configure user identity, and manage remotes.

Inspect commit histories using git log, formatting, graph visualization, author filters, and date ranges.

Add, inspect, rename, update, and prune remote repositories and upstream branch tracking.

Stage all changes, individual files, deleted files, unstage modifications, and add hunks interactively.

Configure local and global .gitignore patterns, exceptions, subfolder rules, and untrack committed files.

Compare working directory changes, staged files, branches, commits, word diffs, and patch generation.

Roll back commits, undo working copy changes, recover with reflog, and undo merged commits.

Perform automatic merges, fast-forward merges, no-ff commits, merge strategies, and abort merges.

Clone, initialize, update, move, and remove embedded Git repositories and branch tracking.

Craft clear commit messages, amend commits, stage selectively with patch mode, and sign with GPG.

Create command shortcuts, complex shell aliases, pretty log graphs, and unwatched file helpers.

Rebase local branches, perform interactive rebases to squash or reword commits, and configure autostash.

Set default editors, auto-correct typos, manage multi-account identities, line endings, and proxies.

Create, switch, list, delete, rename, search, and track local and remote branches.

Filter and list commits between branches to verify merges and commit ancestry.

Combine multiple commits into one using reset, merge --squash, interactive rebase, and autosquash.

Apply individual commits or commit ranges across branches, check redundancy, and cherry pick clean patches.

Recover lost commits, dropped stashes, deleted branches, and restored file versions using git reflog.

Interactively or forcefully remove untracked files, ignored files, and untracked directories.

Configure automatic line ending normalization, binary file detection, and custom diff drivers.

Map author names and email aliases in .mailmap to deduplicate contributor statistics in git shortlog.

Compare Centralized, Gitflow, Feature Branch, GitHub Flow, and Forking collaboration models.

Fetch and merge remote changes, keep linear history with rebase, overwrite local, and handle permissions.

Automate pre-commit, commit-msg, pre-push, and post-receive validation scripts on client and server.

Execute shallow clones, single-branch clones, recursive submodule clones, and proxy connections.

Temporarily shelve dirty working directory changes, pop, apply, create partial stashes, and recover dropped stashes.

Embed third-party repositories, pull updates, and backport commits using git subtree.

Rename directories, files, local branches, and remote-tracking branches safely.

Push branches, tags, specific commits, configure default push behavior, and use force-with-lease.

Understand Git’s object store: blobs, trees, commits, annotated tags, HEAD, and symbolic refs.

Bridge Git and Team Foundation Server (TFVS) with clone, checkin, pull, and push workflows.

Work around Git’s file-only tracking model using .gitkeep and directory conventions.

Interact with Subversion repositories: clone, dcommit, linear rebase, and empty directory tracking.

Export clean zip and tar archives of specific commits, branches, tags, or subdirectories with git archive.

Bulk rewrite commit author names, emails, and dates across repository history.

Migrate repositories from SVN, Mercurial (hg), and TFVC into Git with complete commit history.

Inspect commit details, patch diffs, tree objects, and blob contents using git show.

Identify conflict markers, resolve file collisions manually, and complete the merge commit.

Package commits and references into offline sneakernet files with git bundle.

Visualize repository DAGs, commit ranges, ancestry paths, and file histories with Gitk.

Locate regression-introducing commits via binary search using manual or automated git bisect.

Inspect line-by-line file authorship, commit timestamps, line ranges, and ignore whitespace adjustments.

Master revision specifiers: SHA-1 prefixes, symbolic refs, HEAD^, HEAD~n, ranges, and text searches.

Manage multiple working directories attached to the same repository simultaneously with git worktree.

List, add, rename, prune, query, and configure URLs for remote tracking repositories.

Track binary assets and heavy files via external pointers using Git LFS and .gitattributes.

Generate email-compatible patches with git format-patch and apply changes cleanly with git apply and git am.

Analyze commit counts, lines of code per author, commit dates, and find local repositories.

Configure SMTP and send patch series to open source mailing lists using git send-email.

Compare built-in tools (gitk, git-gui) with GitHub Desktop, GitKraken, SourceTree, and SmartGit.

Recover lost commits after erroneous rebases, accidental resets, or bad squashes using git reflog.

Perform GUI squashing, assume-unchanged flagging, file ignoring, and branching with TortoiseGit on Windows.

Configure external visual diff and merge tools including KDiff3, IntelliJ IDEA, and Beyond Compare.

Low-level reference updates, validation, and reflog creation using git update-ref.

Customize PS1 in bash to display the active Git branch dynamically in your terminal prompt.

Implement custom pre-push checks, WIP commit blockers, and test suite runners locally.

Automate recurring merge conflict resolution across rebases with Reuse Recorded Resolution (rerere).

Update local remote URLs when GitHub or Bitbucket repository names are changed.

Create lightweight and annotated tags, list, search version tags, and push tags to remotes.

Prune dead remote tracking branches and clean up deleted local branches using git fetch -p.

Compare tree objects, inspect commit modifications, and format diff output at plumbing level.