The Git Cheat Sheet for most Common Operations

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Add, commit and push files to Git

Add :

git add <file_path>

Commit :

git commit -m "<commit_message>"

Push :

git push origin <branch_name>

Fetch and apply changes from the upstream branch

Fetch :

git fetch upstream

Apply : Make sure you are in the branch that the fetched changes should be applied to.

git rebase upstream/<upstream_branch_name>

Change the commit message of the last commit

git commit --amend

Change the commit message of multiple commits

git rebase -i HEAD~3

Then change the word “pick” to “reword” for commit messages you want to change. 3 is the number of commits to go back.

Squash commits

git rebase -i HEAD~2

Then change the word “pick” to “squash” for new commits you need to squash with the previous commit. 2 is the number of commits to go back.

Checkout a specific tag

List the available tags :

git tag -l

Checkout :

git checkout tags/<tag_name> -b <new_branch_name>

Locally merge an upstream pull request

git pull upstream pull/<PR_ID>/head

Ex: git pull upstream pull/200/head

Undo an accidental git merge that has not been pushed to GitHub yet

Method 1 : Check git log to find the commit_hash for the command below.

git reset --hard <commit_hash>

Method 2 : 5 here is the number of commits that you need to get back.

git reset --hard HEAD~5

Method 3 : ORIG_HEAD will point to a commit directly before merge has occurred. You don't need to find for the commit_hash.

git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD

Reset already added files

git reset <path-to-file>

Delete multiple files from Git at once

Track the deleted files :

git ls-files --deleted -z | xargs -0 git rm

The deleted files will be in green now, meaning they are ready to be committed. After listing the files from the above command, you can commit and push them to GitHub.

Delete one or specific files from Git

git rm <file1> <file2> <file3>

Force push to GitHub

git push -f origin <branch_name> 

Set upstream URL for the local repo

git remote add upstream <url_to_upstream_repo_in_git>

Ex : git remote add upstream https://github.com/perlCompany/newrepo.git

Change URL already set in local repo

git remote set-url <name> <url_to_name_repo_in_git>

Ex : git remote set-url origin master

Apply a specific commit from one branch to another

Checkout to the branch you need to apply the commit to. Then execute,

git cherry-pick <commit_hash_from_other_branch>

Create a new branch

git checkout -b <new_branch_name> <existing_branch_name>

Push a local branch to a remote repository

git push origin <new_branch_name>

Delete an existing branch

Before executing the command below, make sure you are in a different branch than the branch that you want to delete.

If there are no uncommitted changes in the branch to delete, -d option can be used.

git branch -d <branch_to_delete>

If there are uncommitted changes but you anyway want to delete the branch, use the -D option as follows.

git branch -D <branch_to_delete>

Revert back to a particular commit

Note : The hard option in the command below deletes all other commits done after the specific commit that you are reverting back to.

git reset --hard <commit_hash>

Stash the changes

When you want to update your working branch with the changes in the upstream branch, this comes in handy. If you already have uncommitted changes in the local working branch, you can stash them first, merge the changes from the upstream branch and then apply the stashed changes on top of the updated branch.

Stash the uncommitted changes with

git stash

After updating apply the stashed changes back

git stash pop

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