Creating and cloning a repository

Clone an existing repository from a URL

git clone https://urlToRepo.com/repoName.git

Clone an existing repository from a file and checkout a specific branch

git clone /path/to/repo/repoName.git -b branchName

Set up a new git repository in the current directory

git init

Staging files

Stage all new, modified, and deleted files

git add -A

Stage all modified and deleted files but not new (untracked) ones

git add -u

N.B. In git version 2.0 onwards git add -A and git add -u will operate on the entire working tree and not just the current path.

Stage a specific file or set of files

git add path/to/file1.txt file2.txt

N.B. In git version 1.x using git add <pathspec> will only add new and modified files within the specified path-spec. From version 2.0 onwards git add <pathspec> will also stage files that have been deleted within the path-spec.

Stage new and modified files in a specific directory (and deleted files in git version 2.x+)

git add path/to/dir

Stage new, modified, and deleted files in a specific directory (in version 1.x)

git add -A path/to/dir

Delete a file and stage the change in git

git rm path/to/file.txt

Delete a directory and its contents and stage the change in git

git rm -r path/to/dir

Committing

Commit staged files with a short commit message

git commit -m "Commit message"

Commit stages files with a custom author

git commit --author="John Doe <john@doe.com>" -m "Commit message"

Viewing repository status

View status of repository

git status

View abbreviated status of the repository

git status -s

The left column is the status of files in the staging area and the right column is the status of files in the working tree.

M = Modified, A = Added, D = Deleted, R = Renamed, ? = Untracked files.

Viewing repository history

Show the last 10 commit logs

git log -n 10

Show commit logs in a text graph format

git log --graph

Undoing mistakes

Change the last commit message

git commit --amend

Change the author of the last commit

git commit --amend  --author="John Doe <john@doe.com>" -m "Commit message"

Branches

Create a new branch and switch to it

git checkout -b name_of_new_branch

List all branches (including remote branches)

git branch -a

Checkout an existing branch

git checkout name_of_existing_branch

Delete a branch

git branch -d name_of_branch

Remove local remote tracking branches that have been removed on the remote repository

git remote prune origin

Git Ignore

The .gitignore file specifies files that you don't what to include as part of your git repository

# Ignore .bak files in all directories
*.bak

# Ignore any files in a log/ directory
log/

# Ignore log/*.txt (but not log/foo/*.txt
log/*.txt

# Ignore all .txt files in a log directory or any of its sub directories
log/**/*.txt

Git Configuration

Set the committer name and email address globally

git config --global user.name "John Doe"
git config --global user.email john@doe.com

Set the committer name and email address for the current repository

git config user.name "John Doe"
git config user.email john@doe.com

Set the default text editor to nano

git config --global core.editor "nano"