Global Setup See also Submodules and History Cleanup configurations below. git config --global user.name "First Last" git config --global user.email first@example.com git config --global color.status.branch magenta # This makes sure that changes to tags are also fetched. The second # version in addition makes sure they are overriden (required from # git 2.20.0). # git config --global remote.origin.tagopt --tags git config --global remote.origin.fetch '+refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*' git config --global --unset remote.origin.tagopt # Enable hooks globally. # git config --global core.hooksPath /bdep-util/git-hooks # Override the global hooks with the repository-specific hooks (run in a # repository directory). # git config core.hooksPath .git/hooks Commit Messages 1. Separate subject from body with a blank line 2. Limit the subject line to 78 characters 3. Capitalize the subject line 4. Do not end the subject line with a period 5. Use the imperative voice in the subject line (e.g., "Implement foo" rather than "Implemented foo") 6. No articles (a/the) in the subject line 7. Wrap the body at 78 characters 8. Unless this is already captured in the commit payload (e.g., in code comments, documentation, etc) use the body to explain what and why Undo (move to index) last commit git reset --soft HEAD~ Tag git tag -a X.Y.Z -m "Tag version X.Y.Z" Squash multiple commits into one git rebase -i HEAD~ http://www.gitready.com/advanced/2009/02/10/squashing-commits-with-rebase.html Change commit message git commit --amend Revert uncommited changes git reset --hard HEAD Copy commit from one branch to the other # On the source branch git log -1 git cout git cherry-pick Setup remote repository On remote: 1. Use the server/mkrepo.sh script: mkrepo.sh mkrepo.sh --private is without the .git suffix. On local: 1. git remote add origin git.codesynthesis.com:/var/scm/proj/proj.git 2. git push --tags origin master 3. # blow the local project and do clone git clone git.codesynthesis.com:/var/scm/proj/proj.git [name] Setup severe git account (replace USER) # adduser --disabled-password --shell /usr/bin/git-shell USER # usermod -a -G scm USER # su -l -s /bin/bash USER $ mkdir .ssh $ mv /tmp/id_rsa.pub .ssh/authorized_keys $ chown -R USER:USER .ssh $ chmod 700 .ssh $ chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys Delete a branch from a remote repository git push origin :experimental Find a ref that matches experimental in the origin repository (e.g. refs/heads/experimental), and delete it. Using the push.sh script: ./push.sh : Rebasing Local (e.g., from a feature branch to master): git rebase [] If is not specified, current branch is used. If is specified, it is checked out. Remote (e.g., merge someone else's changes): git fetch git rebase origin[/master] git push --tags origin History Cleanup This is the overall process for cleaning up the history in a feature branch before merging it into master. The goal is to end up with a nice and clean history in master, without any divergences and merges that usually the result of the git merge command. Note: make sure you have rerere enabled for this process to work smoothly: git config --global rerere.enabled true Note: if you are just learning this procedure, make a local backup copy of your repository in case things go badly and you need to start from scratch. To achieve this we first merge any unmerged changes that may be on master and then rebase the whole thing on master. The end result of this step is a history that first has all the commits that are from master followed by all the commit from the feature branch (in other words, master is now a prefix of our history which means we can fastforward-only (--ff-only) merge this history into it): git cout master git pull git cout feature git merge master git rebase master The last step ('git rebase') is where the rerere machinery mentioned earlier may have to come to play and if you didn't have it enabled during the development of, things may not go very smoothly and we need this side note: in general, rebase is no magic, what it does is take the patches from commits that you have and try to replay them on top of your new base, resolving conflicts just like merge does. So, if during development of your feature branch you had a merge conflicts that you had to manually resolve, then you will have merge conflicts during rebase that you will have to resolve as well. This is where rerere comes in. What it does is record your conflict resolutions when you first manually resolved them during your feature branch development. When later, during rebase, it sees that the same conflict is being resolved during rebase, it automatically applies the stored resolution. So if you didn't have rerere enabled from the beginning, this should explain why things didn't go smoothly for you: since you didn't have rerere enabled during your earlier merges, it didn't record the resolutions. And in this case what you would have gotten is a normal merge conflict, just like the first time, that you have to resolve manually again. Running 'git stat' should give you the idea of what needs fixing. Once you have edit the files, run 'git add' and then 'git rebase --continue'. Now, a note on rerere: again, it is kind of magic but not exactly. Specifically, it doesn't hide this whole process from you. Instead, it applies the conflict resolution that it has stored from earlier but stops for you to confirm that all is good. So what normally happens is that you still get the rebase merge conflict except that it applies the resolution and there is a message in git rebase output to this effect. Now you need to review it (e.g., with gitk), run 'git add' to confirm it's good, and then run 'git rebase --continue'. And of the side node. If you managed to get through all this, run gitk and verify that you now have a linear history that starts with master. If things got hairy along the way, you may want to verify that the end result, content-wise, is exactly the same as what you have started with by diff'ing with the backup you have made at the beginning. The second step is to clean up the commit history of our feature branch since it may have "dirty", work-in-progress commits. This may involve squashing several commits into one, rewording commit messages, and possibly reordering the commits. The swiss army knife for this is the interactive git rebase: git rebase -i HEAD~ Where is the number of commits you would like to cleanup. Generally, if you want to work on all the commits on this feature branch run gitk and count the number of commits from the top to the first commit that is on master (and if you know a better way to achieve the same result, let me know). That is your . Note also that the order of commits in the resulting edit file will be the reverse of what you see in gitk. Once in the edit file, use commands to squash, reword, or reorder the history (note that squashing several commits automatically means rewording the commit message). Note also that you can re-run this command multiple times. For example, you can squash some commits, then examine the history (with gitk), then squash some more, etc. Finally, once the history is cleaned up, we can merge it into master: git cout master git merge --ff-only feature Verify with gitk everything looks good on master and push: git push It is also a good idea to delete the feature branch, both locally and on the origin: git br -d feature git push origin :feature Submodules Think of a submodule as a pointer to a specific commit (as opposed to something "latest") in another project. Moving this pointer to another commit is an explicit change to the containing project that we must perform and then commit. In many situations this pointer will be left "dangling", that is, the actual files corresponding to the commit won't be checked out unless we run an extra command or pass an extra option to make git do so. git config --global fetch.recurseSubmodules true git config --global status.submoduleSummary true git config --global diff.submodule log git submodule add ../.git # Project path interpreted relative to # our remote. git submodule update --init # init and update git clone --recursive # same as doing above manually git submodule update --remote [sub] # update submodule(s) (to remote master) # --rebase git fetch git checkout # As above but to specific commit. git pull # fetches submodules, but does not update git submodule update # must be done explicitly (--init --recursive)! # Making changes, first make sure up-to-date with remote # git cout master # in submodule, to make changes, commit/push must be on both! # If already made changes (in sub/): git stash git cout master git stash pop # Remove submodule. # git submodule deinit sub git rm sub # then commit