Top 20 Git Commands with Example

Saurabh Kulshrestha
Edureka
Published in
7 min readJul 23, 2018
Git Commands — Edureka

Git & GitHub has steadily risen from being just a preferred skill to a must-have skill for multiple job roles today. In this article, I will talk about the Top 20 Git Commands that you will be using frequently while you are working with Git.

Following are the Git commands which are being covered:

  • git config
  • git init
  • git clone
  • git add
  • git commit
  • git diff
  • git reset
  • git status
  • git rm
  • git log
  • git show
  • git tag
  • git branch
  • git checkout
  • git merge
  • git remote
  • git push
  • git pull
  • git stash

So, let’s get started now!!

git config

Usage: git config -global user.name “[name]”

Usage: git config -global user.email “[email address]”

This command sets the author name and email address respectively to be used with your commits.

git init

Usage: git init [repository name]

This command is used to start a new repository.

git clone

Usage: git clone [url]

This command is used to obtain a repository from an existing URL.

git add

Usage: git add [file]

This command adds one or more files to the staging area.

Usage: git add *

This command adds one or more to the staging area.

git commit

Usage: git commit -m “[ Type in the commit message]”

This command records or snapshots the file permanently in the version history.

Usage: git commit -a

This command commits any files you’ve added with the git add command and also commits any files you’ve changed since then.

git diff

Usage: git diff

This command shows the file differences which are not yet staged.

Usage: git diff –staged

This command shows the differences between the files in the staging area and the latest version present.

Usage: git diff [first branch] [second branch]

This command shows the differences between the two branches mentioned.

git reset

Usage: git reset [file]

This command unstages the file, but it preserves the file contents.

Usage: git reset [commit]

This command undoes all the commits after the specified commit and preserves the changes locally.

Usage: git reset -hard [commit]

This command discards all history and goes back to the specified commit.

git status

Usage: git status

This command lists all the files that have to be committed.

git rm

Usage: git rm [file]

This command deletes the file from your working directory and stages the deletion.

git log

Usage: git log

This command is used to list the version history for the current branch.

Usage: git log -follow[file]

This command lists version history for a file, including the renaming of files also.

git show

Usage: git show [commit]

This command shows the metadata and content changes of the specified commit.

git tag

Usage: git tag [commitID]

This command is used to give tags to the specified commit.

git branch

Usage: git branch

This command lists all the local branches in the current repository.

Usage: git branch [branch name]

This command creates a new branch.

Usage: git branch -d [branch name]

This command deletes the feature branch.

git checkout

Usage: git checkout [branch name]

This command is used to switch from one branch to another.

Usage: git checkout -b [branch name]

This command creates a new branch and also switches to it.

git merge

Usage: git merge [branch name]

This command merges the specified branch’s history into the current branch.

git remote

Usage: git remote add [variable name] [Remote Server Link]

This command is used to connect your local repository to the remote server.

git push

Usage: git push [variable name] master

This command sends the committed changes of master branch to your remote repository.

Usage: git push -all [variable name]

This command pushes all branches to your remote repository.

Usage: git push [variable name] :[branch name]

This command sends the branch commits to your remote repository.

git pull

Usage: git pull [Repository Link]

This command fetches and merges changes on the remote server to your working directory.

git stash

Usage: git stash save

This command temporarily stores all the modified tracked files.

Usage: git stash pop

This command restores the most recently stashed files.

Usage: git stash list

This command lists all stashed changesets.

Usage: git stash drop

This command discards the most recently stashed changeset.

This brings us to the end of the article. If you wish to check out more articles on the market’s most trending technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Python, Ethical Hacking, then you can refer to Edureka’s official site.

Do look out for other articles in this series which will explain the various other aspects of DevOps.

1. DevOps Tutorial

2. Git Tutorial

3. Jenkins Tutorial

4. Docker Tutorial

5. Ansible Tutorial

6. Puppet Tutorial

7. Chef Tutorial

8. Nagios Tutorial

9. How To Orchestrate DevOps Tools?

10. Continuous Delivery

11. Continuous Integration

12. Continuous Deployment

13. Continuous Delivery vs Continuous Deployment

14. CI CD Pipeline

15. Docker Compose

16. Docker Swarm

17. Docker Networking

18. Ansible Vault

19. Ansible Roles

20. Ansible for AWS

21. Jenkins Pipeline

22. Top Docker Commands

23. Git vs GitHub

24. DevOps Interview Questions

25. Who Is A DevOps Engineer?

26. DevOps Life cycle

27. Git Reflog

28. Ansible Provisioning

29. Top DevOps Skills That Organizations Are Looking For

30.Waterfall vs Agile

31. Maven For Building Java Applications

32. Jenkins CheatSheet

33. Ansible Cheat Sheet

34. Ansible Interview Questions And Answers

35. 50 Docker Interview Questions

36. Agile Methodology

37. Jenkins Interview Questions

38. Git Interview Questions

39. Docker Architecture

40. Linux commands Used In DevOps

41. Jenkins vs Bamboo

42. Nagios Interview Questions

43.DevOps Real-Time Scenarios

44.Difference between Jenkins and Jenkins X

45.Docker for Windows

46.Git vs Github

Originally published at https://www.edureka.co on July 23, 2018.

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Saurabh Kulshrestha
Edureka

Saurabh is a technology enthusiast with interest in DevOps, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Data Science.