Git is a version control system, another great invention of Linus Torvalds. This will be a basic cheatsheet containing common git commands targeted at beginners. See the links in the bottom for advanced git cheatsheets.

Common git workflow

To create (initialize) a git repository

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$> git init

To clone a remote git repository

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$> git clone [remote repo url]

To see the current status of the working directory

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$> git status

To add files [to the staging area] for commiting

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$> # to add a single file
$> git add file1.txt
$> # to add multiple files
$> git add file_1.py file_2.py file_3.py file_n.py
$> # to add all files changed
$> git add .

Once you added files [to staging area] for commiting, next step is to commit. This is how to do it.

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$> git commit -m "commit message para 1" -m "commit message para 2 and so on"

Imaging you forget to add some changes to your last commit or you want to change commit message of previous commit. Add the new changes to the staging area by git add command (if you only want to change the commit message, you can skip this step), and then amend the previous commit like this.

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$> git commit --amend -m "new message"
$> # or if you don't want to change previous commit message
$> git commit --amend --no-edit

To push your local commits to the remote repository

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$> git push origin [branch-name]
$> # see below example, where branch name is main
$> git push origin main

Similarly, to pull the changes from remote repo to your local copy

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$> git pull origin main
$> # or simply, for the current working branch
$> git pull

To log all commits

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$> git log
$> # to get a one line summary of each commit
$> git log --oneline

Find a problem in your new software version? Revert back to old version like this.

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$> git revert <commit-hash>

This will revert changes back to the given commit (commit-hash). This will not delete the old faulty commits. Instead, git will create a new commit that cancels off the faulty commits.

Useful references

Note: SO is the abbreviation for StackOverflow

Advanced git cheatsheets