Git command reference

A quick reference for commands that are useful to me. Use at own risk.

Moving commits between branches

Moving a specific commit from one branch onto another

git cherrypick COMMIT_HASH

Moving all commits from one branch to the end of another

git checkout BRANCH
git pull
git rebase BRANCH_WITH_COMMITS

Moving all commits from one branch to the end of another as a single commit

git checkout BRANCH_WITH_COMMITS
git rebase -i BRANCH_TO_MERGE_TO

This will allow you to interactively edit the commits on your branch that are not on the branch you wish to merge into. Add “s” for squash next to lines to be squashed. Keep the latest as-is.

If all looks good, you will have a single commit on your branch which can then be merged

git checkout BRANCH_TO_MERGE_TO
git pull
git merge BRANCH_WITH_COMMITS

Pulling in the difference between specific files on a branch

This will pull in changes in specific files/folders from a branch as uncommitted changes on the current branch. Useful if a branch contains some file/folder state that you want to bring through, but you don’t want to bring through any specific commit

git checkout -m BRANCH_WITH_INTENDED_STATE path/to/file.txt
git checkout -m BRANCH_WITH_INTENDED_STATE path/to/folder

Rebase commits from incorrect_branch onto correct_branch

Useful when you have committed changes on a feature branch based on an incorrect branch and want to raise a PR against the correct branch

git checkout FEATURE_BRANCH
git rebase --onto CORRECT_BASE_BRANCH INCORRECT_BASE_BRANCH

Working with a forked repo

Adding a fork as a remote upstream repo

This will allow you to interact with the forked repo and is a necessary prerequisite to the commands below referencing upstream

git remote add upstream https://original_repo.git

Doing git remote -v should now give something like:

origin https://github.com/USER/REPO (fetch)
origin https://github.com/USER/REPO (push)
upstream https://github.com/UPSTREAM_USER/UPSTREAM_REPO (fetch)
upstream https://github.com/UPSTREAM_USER/UPSTREAM_REPO (push)

Pull upstream changes into your fork

Use this when you have forked a repository and want to pull the upstream changes into your fork

git fetch upstream
git pull --rebase upstream BRANCH_NAME

Checking out someone’s fork as a branch

This can be useful if you want to work with a branch on someone’s fork but don’t want to clone their fork separately.

git remote add THEIR_USERNAME git@github.com:THEIR_USERNAME/THEIR_REPO.git
git fetch THEIR_USERNAME
git checkout -b LOCAL_NAME_FOR_THEIR_BRANCH THEIR_USERNAME/THEIR_BRANCH

Blasting away local changes

Blowing away uncommitted local changes

git reset --hard

Blowing away committed (but unpushed) local changes

git reset --hard origin/BRANCH_NAME

Blowing away committed and pushed changes to your fork

Useful when you have made a mess and want to reset your fork to match the forked repo

git fetch upstream
git reset --hard upstream/BRANCH_NAME  
git push origin BRANCH_NAME --force

Fixing mistakes

Revert 4 commits and squash changes into a single reverting commit

git revert master~4..master
git rebase -i

Undoing a rebase

git reflog 
git reset --hard HEAD@{5}

Undoing the last local (unpushed) commit

git reset --soft HEAD~

Working with pull requests

Checking out a PR as a branch

Useful if you want to grab the PR code locally. If the pull request is from a fork of your repo, this saves you having to clone that fork

git fetch origin pull/PR_NUM/head:NEW_LOCAL_BRANCH
git checkout NEW_LOCAL_BRANCH

Miscellaneous

Find missing commits

Every now and again, something goes missing. This shows changes to the local repository reference logs

git reflog

Unstage file before committing

git reset -- FILENAME