Tags

Annotated vs lightweight tags

• “Annotated tags are meant for release while lightweight tags are meant for private or temporary object labels.”
• Annotated tags have an associated message whereas lightweight tags do not
• git describe without command line options only sees annotated tags

Create a lightweight tag

$ git tag <tag-name>

Create an annotated tag with the message inline

$ git tag -a <tag-name> -m <message>

Create an annotated tag. An editor will then start to allow you to type the message text, which can be multi-line.

$ git tag -a <tag-name>

List tags

$ git tag -l

List tags with messages with up to max-lines lines of the message

$ git tag -l -n<max-lines>

List remote tags

$ git ls-remote --tags <remote-name>

Delete a local tag

$ git tag --delete <tag-name>

Delete a remote tag

$ git push --delete origin <tag-name>

Staging and unstaging files

Stage a file

$ git add <file-name>

Stage all files

$ git add --all

Stage new and modified files (not deleted)

$ git add .

Stage modified and deleted files (not new)

$ git add -u

Unstage a file

$ git reset <file-name>

Unstage all currently staged changes

$ git reset

Hard reset local state to match remote state for a branch

$ git fetch --all
$ git checkout <branch-name>
$ git reset --hard origin/<branch-name>

Removing files

Remove a file from the repo and also from the workspace (local filesystem).

$ git rm file1.txt
$ git commit -m "remove file1.txt"

Remove the file from the repo but leave it in the workspace.

$ git rm --cached file1.txt
$ git commit -m "remove file1.txt"

Committing

Amend the last commit message

$ git commit --amend

Commit and specify a single line commit message. Do not lauch the default editor to create the commit message.

$ git commit -m "This is my commit message"

Squash commits together

To squash the last n commits into one commit we can use an interactive rebase. Execute the following command.

$ git rebase -i HEAD~n

This will then launch an editor instance that contains a list of the last n commits. We can mark these commits to be picked, squashed, edited, etc. To abort the rebase just close the editor without saving any changes to the file. To proceed with the rebase, mark the first/top commit (the latest one) as ‘p’ and all the others as ‘s’. Then save the file and close the editor. Another editor instance will launch that will allow us to create a new commit message for the resulting single commit. Compose the message, save the file and then close the editor. Job done.

Stashing

Not to be confused with Phishing.

Save the current state of your working directory, and the index, and revert to a clean working directory

$ git stash

or equivalently …

$ git stash push

List all current stashes

$ git stash list

Apply the latest stashed state back to your working directory but do not remove it from the stash list

$ git stash apply

Apply the latest stashed state back to your working directory and remove it from the stash list

$ git stash pop

Clear the stash list

$ git stash clear

Branching

Not to be confused with a stick.

Create a branch. Note that this just creates the branch, it doesn’t automatically make it the current branch.

$ git branch <branch-name>

Switch to a branch

$ git checkout <branch-name>

Delete a branch

$ git branch -d <branch-name>

List all branches

$ git branch --list

or equivalently …

$ git branch

List all remote branches

$ git branch --list -r

or equivalently …

$ git branch -r

Delete a remote branch

$ git branch -d -r <branch-name>