Git tips and tricks

Sometimes you have to make very rare manipulations with your git repo, but can't remember how exactly it works. Here I'm collecting useful git use cases.

Rebase previous N to one

If you need to unite last N commits on current brunch run this rebase command with your number of last commits

git rebase -i HEAD~4

After it opens a rebase file, check here the last commit with "p" letter and other ones with "s" letter. Save it. And save next opened file with new commit message file too. These steps will do single commit with all changes from this N commits.
It could be useful if you don't want to show in remote repo all the history of your commits on the branch. Or maybe want to hide some of them.

Undoing last commit

git reset --soft HEAD~1

If you don't want to keep these changes, simply use the --hard flag. Be sure to only do this when you're sure you don't need these changes anymore.

git reset --hard HEAD~1

Show diff between branches

This shows only the changes between current local branch and the remote master branch, and ignores any changes in the local branch that came from merge commits.

git diff origin/master...

Replace master with better branch

git checkout master
git reset --hard better_branch
git push -f origin master

Merge master to current branch

Merge all changes from master to your current branch:

git pull origin master

and resolve conflicts if needed.

Merge with squash

Merge from branch with squash will erase all commits history in the branch

# Work in feature/1 branch
git branch "feature/1"
git checkout "feature/1"

# Move to the master branch.
git checkout master

# Merge the "feature/1" branch and squash the commits.
git merge --squash feature/1

# Resolve conflicts

# Commit your changes and add a single commit message for all your commits.
# You can omit the "-m" to have a template popping up based on your previous commit messages.
git commit -m "Feature 1 : 1, 2 et 3"

# Delete the "feature/1" branch that is no longer needed.
git branch -D feature/1

Reset

Soft

You've done a few tiny commits and want them all be put into one commit:

A -> B -> C -> D || A with ALL (B,C,D) -> E

git reset --soft A
git commit -m “my new merged commit”
git push origin branch

New commit E contains all of the files that were committed in B, C, D.

Mixed

You’ve just pushed a few commits, but you want to go back and remove a couple of files in a previous commit.

A -> B-> C -> D || A with ANY (B,C,D) -> E

git reset --mixed A

Your branch head and index is pointing at A and all of your changes in B, C and D are there, but are untracked. Now you are free to add the files that you wish to add into a new commit.

git add <files>
git commit -m "updated commit"
git push origin branch

The head is now at the new commit E, and any files that you’ve not staged will still be in your working tree, ready to add into another commit or to do what you want with.

Hard

Do it only if you want to go back a few commits and get rid of every change you’ve made since.

git reset --hard A
git push origin branchname --force

This will delete your commits from the remote branch history.

Add submodule

git submodule add <link_to_git_repo> <link_to_submodule_folder>
git submodule init 
git submodule update

Edit last commit message

git commit --amend

Add missed file to last commit

git add missed-file.txt
git commit --amend

Move last commit from master to branch

git branch branch-name
git reset HEAD~ --hard
git checkout branch-name

Clean up local commits before pushing

git rebase --interactive 

if you didn't specify any tracking information for this branch you will have to add upstream and remote branch information:

git rebase --interactive origin branch

Work With Multiple Branches Simultaneously

Creates a linked working tree (i.e., another directory on the file system associated with the repo) called path, one level above your current working directory, with the specified branch checked out.

#create
git worktree add <../path> <branch>

# remove
git worktree remove [-f] <../path>

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