git

Section: (pj)
Updated: 2025-01-23
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Comparing branches

To compare two branches:

: git diff master..develop

To show all commits in develop that aren't in master:

: git log develop hamaster --no-merges

To diff by date:

: git log 'master@{3 days ago}' master git log 'master@{3 days ago}' master -- path/to/file

Old history

To see an old version of something:

: git show HEAD~1:path/to/file

Here ~1 means "1 revision before HEAD"

To find the commit in which you removed an object:

: git log -n 1 -- <filename>

To get it back:

: git checkout <commit>ha <filename>

To use git blame but only show changes prior to an old commit:

: git blame <commit>ha -- <filename>

Remotes

To see everything on a remote repository:

: git remote show origin

To enable access to new remote branches, you might have to do this:

: git fetch origin

To create a local branch based on a remote branch:

: git checkout -b <branch> origin/<branch>

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1783405/git-checkout-remote-branch

To set a local branch to track a remote branch:

: git branch --set-upstream foo origin/foo

To make a bare repo you can push to via ssh:

: git init --bare .

Erasing

To erase the last commit without altering your index or checkout:

: git reset --soft HEAD~1

To reset your checkout to origin:

: git fetch origin && git reset --hard origin/valid-time # whatever branch you want to copy from

To un-stage a change without changing your working copy:

: git rm --cached filename

Security

To run git with a different ssh key:

: ssh-agent bash -c 'git add <private-key>; git <cmd>'

or even better (especially if you have multiple Github/Bitbucket accounts):

: git config core.sshCommand "ssh -i ~/.ssh/foo -F /dev/null"

Blame

To skip whitespace-only changes, use the -w option.

To ask about specific lines, use -L:

: git blame -L10,+5 -- path/to/file

That will show only information about line 10 and the next 5 lines.

To get the second-to-last change (or third-to-last, etc.), ask git to run blame as of the commit right before the one you want to skip:

: git blame 123abcha -- path/to/file

where 123abc is the commit that later changed those lines.

It is probably useful to combine this with -L:

: git blame -L 10,+5 123abcha -- path/to/file

Credits: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5098256/git-blame-prior-commits

Rebasing

If the previous commits changed (e.g. because your are stacking PRs), you can rebase just the last n commits with --onto:

: git checkout temporal-fks-2 git rebase --onto multirange f0a4f8475

or in one line:

: git rebase --onto multirange f0a4f8475 temporal-fks-2

That means "take everything from f0a4f8475 (but not including it) to temporal-fks-2, and rebase it onto multirange.

AUTHORS

Paul A. Jungwirth.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 21:16:02 GMT, January 04, 2026