Git basics

This post goes over some common git commands and explains what they do.

Stages and File states

Git tracks changes to files in snapshots and stores these in its database. Files managed through git can have one of three states and go through three stages in the git workflow.

File States

Files have the following states:

Stage	Explanation
Modified	A file that git knows about has been changed in some way but the change hasn’t been committed.
Staging	The changed file is marked to go into the next commit. File tagged to go into next commit using git add. Adds changes to staging area.
Committed	The change or modifications to the file are stored in the git database.

Git sections

Every Git project has these three sections:

Section	Description
Working tree	Single checkout of a version of the project
Staging Area	A file that stores information about what will go into the next commit. These are files git knows about.
Git directory	This is where git stores metadata about your project and its object database. This is the .git folder

The basic workflow in git is you make changes to files in the working tree, stage the ones you want to go into the next commit, and then do a commit. The commit stores a snapshot of the changes permanently to your Git directory.

Basic Commands

Here’s a list of a few commands you are likely to use to manage a local git project.

Command	Description
git init	Creates a .git subdirectory and initialises a new git project
git clone <URL>	Pull down every version and history of every file in the linked project. Initialises .git subdirectory and checks out a copy of the latest version of the project
git add <file>	Tells git about a file. This tracks and stages the file.
git status	Shows the status or the state of files. Use the -s flag for more concise output.
git diff	Shows you what has changed between two commits
git diff --staged	Shows you what has changed in staged files (i.e files that have been git add-ed)
git diff --cached	Same as git diff --cached, it shows changes to staged files
git commit	Commits or saves changes in staged files to the git database.
git commit -v	Shows what you changed in the commit message
git commit -a -m <msg>	Skips staging area and commits all modified files.
git rm <file>	Delete a file and remove it from the staging area or index.
git rm -f	Force git to remove a modified file
git rm --cached <filename>	Make git forget about a file without deleting it from the filesystem.
git mv <file_from> <file_to>	Move or rename a file; equivalent to: mv file_from file_to git rm file_from git add file_to
git log	View commit history. This command takes many different options that affect its output. I will put up a separate post about it.
git commit --amend	Edit the previous commit. Useful for removing files or changing commit message.
git reset HEAD <file>	Reset a file back to being unstaged modified.
git checkout -- <file>	Unmodify a modified file
git restore --staged <file>	Unstage a file
git restore <file>	Unmodify a modified file back to the state it was in in the last commit.
git remote	A remote is a version of the project you have hosted elsewhere. git remote shows the server you cloned from, usually called origin.
git remote -v	Includes URLs of the remotes associated with your project.
git remote add <name> <URL>	Add a new remote. Use git fetch <name> to fetch from the remote.
git push <remote_name> <branch>	Push changes to a remote. For example, you can do git push origin master to push to the master branch on the origin remote.
git remote show <name>	Show information about the remote.
git remote rename	Rename a remote. Example: git remote rename pb vuyisile renames the pb remote to vuyisile
git remote remove <name>	Remove the named remote.