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Git Tips And Tricks

Various Git tips I learnt along the way

Show local and remote branches

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git branch
git branch -r

See branches sorted by the last commit

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git branch --sort=-committerdate

Note: some git commands require installing globally NPM module diff-so-fancy.

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npm i -g diff-so-fancy

See the diffs with the log

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git log -p

Get the file from another branch

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git checkout <branch name> <filename>
# even from another commit
git checkout <sha> <filename>

Checkout previous branch

Just like cd - goes to the previous working directory, git checkout - goes to the previously checkout branch.

Git CLI commands

I use git-extras to perform all my Git commands from the terminal.

Remove untracked files

Sometimes you get a bunch of generated files in the repo, and would like to remove them.

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# first, see which files will be removed
$ git clean -d -n
# you can go through each file and confirm you want it deleted
$ git clean -d -i
# or if you are sure, delete them
$ git clean -d -f

Merge another branch with default merge message

Typically, if you execute git merge <branch name> it merges that branch into the current branch. The merge creates a commit and Git asks you to edit the commit message. You can avoid editing and just accept the default message.

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$ git merge <branch name> --no-edit

Copying a repository

To quickly download a snapshot of a remote repository and remove its .git folder (for example to start your own project), use the tool degit. You can even specify a tag to clone and subfolder

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$ npx degit user/repo
$ npx degit user/repo#tag
$ npx degit user/repo/path/to/subfolder

See more

Read my other Git blog posts, starting with Git aliases.

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