GIT

Learn Git (opens new window)

branching

Make a new branch

git branch newbranch

checkout vs switch

git checkout newbranch

switches to newbranch.

! but

If you modify a file but haven't staged the change, then git checkout <filename> will reverse the modifications... a quick and easy way to cancel changes to a file. You remain in the same branch.

Two completely different purposes, which could lead to confusion if a file name and a branch name are similar.

Having it as two commands is clearer.

checkout has been divided to switch and restore.

git switch newbranch is the newer command.

git switch -c newbranch lets you create and switch to a new branch.

merge

If you want to merge bugFix branch to main, switch to main then use git merge bugFix.

rebasing

Rebasing essentially takes a set of commits, "copies" them, and plops them down somewhere else.

While this sounds confusing, the advantage of rebasing is that it can be used to make a nice linear sequence of commits. The commit log / history of the repository will be a lot cleaner if only rebasing is allowed.

Changing commit messages in direct form even if it was developed in parallel fashion.

Relative Refs

Git log is used to identify each hash. The upside is that Git is smart about hashes. It only requires you to specify enough characters of the hash until it uniquely identifies the commit. So I can type fed2 instead of the long string above.

• Moving upwards one commit at a time with caret operator ^
• Moving upwards a number of times with ~<num>

git switch master^

~ tilde operator

It might be tedious to type ^ several times, so Git also has the tilde (~) operator.

-f force a checkout

You can pass the -f or --force option with the git checkout command to force Git to switch branches, even if you have un-staged changes (in other words, the index of the working tree differs from HEAD). Basically, it can be used to throw away local changes.

reset and revert

Reset is used to go back in local environment.

In a shared environment use revert.