table of contents
other versions
- wheezy 1:1.7.10.4-1+wheezy3
- wheezy-backports 1:1.9.1-1~bpo70+2
- jessie 1:2.1.4-2.1+deb8u2
- jessie-backports 1:2.11.0-3~bpo8+1
- testing 1:2.11.0-3
- unstable 1:2.11.0-4
- experimental 1:2.13.1+next.20170610-1
GITCLI(7) | Git Manual | GITCLI(7) |
NAME¶
gitcli - Git command line interface and conventionsSYNOPSIS¶
gitcliDESCRIPTION¶
This manual describes the convention used throughout Git CLI.•Revisions come first and then paths.
E.g. in git diff v1.0 v2.0 arch/x86 include/asm-x86, v1.0 and v2.0 are
revisions and arch/x86 and include/asm-x86 are paths.
•When an argument can be misunderstood
as either a revision or a path, they can be disambiguated by placing --
between them. E.g. git diff -- HEAD is, "I have a file called HEAD in my
work tree. Please show changes between the version I staged in the index and
what I have in the work tree for that file", not "show difference
between the HEAD commit and the work tree as a whole". You can say git
diff HEAD -- to ask for the latter.
•Without disambiguating --, Git makes a
reasonable guess, but errors out and asking you to disambiguate when
ambiguous. E.g. if you have a file called HEAD in your work tree, git diff
HEAD is ambiguous, and you have to say either git diff HEAD -- or git diff --
HEAD to disambiguate.
When writing a script that is expected to handle random user-input, it is a good
practice to make it explicit which arguments are which by placing
disambiguating -- at appropriate places.
•Many commands allow wildcards in paths,
but you need to protect them from getting globbed by the shell. These two mean
different things:
The former lets your shell expand the fileglob, and you are asking the dot-C
files in your working tree to be overwritten with the version in the index.
The latter passes the *.c to Git, and you are asking the paths in the index
that match the pattern to be checked out to your working tree. After running
git add hello.c; rm hello.c, you will not see hello.c in your working
tree with the former, but with the latter you will.
$ git checkout -- *.c $ git checkout -- \*.c
•Just as the filesystem .
(period) refers to the current directory, using a . as a repository
name in Git (a dot-repository) is a relative path and means your current
repository.
•it’s preferred to use the non
dashed form of Git commands, which means that you should prefer git foo to
git-foo.
•splitting short options to separate
words (prefer git foo -a -b to git foo -ab, the latter may not even
work).
•when a command line option takes an
argument, use the stuck form. In other words, write git foo -oArg
instead of git foo -o Arg for short options, and git foo --long-opt=Arg
instead of git foo --long-opt Arg for long options. An option that takes
optional option-argument must be written in the stuck form.
•when you give a revision parameter to a
command, make sure the parameter is not ambiguous with a name of a file in the
work tree. E.g. do not write git log -1 HEAD but write git log -1 HEAD --; the
former will not work if you happen to have a file called HEAD in the work
tree.
•many commands allow a long option
--option to be abbreviated only to their unique prefix (e.g. if there is no
other option whose name begins with opt, you may be able to spell --opt to
invoke the --option flag), but you should fully spell them out when writing
your scripts; later versions of Git may introduce a new option whose name
shares the same prefix, e.g. --optimize, to make a short prefix that used to
be unique no longer unique.
ENHANCED OPTION PARSER¶
From the Git 1.5.4 series and further, many Git commands (not all of them at the time of the writing though) come with an enhanced option parser.Magic Options¶
Commands which have the enhanced option parser activated all understand a couple of magic command line options: -hgives a pretty printed usage of the command.
--help-all
$ git describe -h usage: git describe [options] <commit-ish>* or: git describe [options] --dirty --contains find the tag that comes after the commit --debug debug search strategy on stderr --all use any ref --tags use any tag, even unannotated --long always use long format --abbrev[=<n>] use <n> digits to display SHA-1s
Some Git commands take options that are only
used for plumbing or that are deprecated, and such options are hidden from the
default usage. This option gives the full list of options.
Negating options¶
Options with long option names can be negated by prefixing --no-. For example, git branch has the option --track which is on by default. You can use --no-track to override that behaviour. The same goes for --color and --no-color.Aggregating short options¶
Commands that support the enhanced option parser allow you to aggregate short options. This means that you can for example use git rm -rf or git clean -fdx.Abbreviating long options¶
Commands that support the enhanced option parser accepts unique prefix of a long option as if it is fully spelled out, but use this with a caution. For example, git commit --amen behaves as if you typed git commit --amend, but that is true only until a later version of Git introduces another option that shares the same prefix, e.g. git commit --amenity option.Separating argument from the option¶
You can write the mandatory option parameter to an option as a separate word on the command line. That means that all the following uses work:$ git foo --long-opt=Arg $ git foo --long-opt Arg $ git foo -oArg $ git foo -o Arg
$ git describe --abbrev HEAD # correct $ git describe --abbrev=10 HEAD # correct $ git describe --abbrev 10 HEAD # NOT WHAT YOU MEANT
NOTES ON FREQUENTLY CONFUSED OPTIONS¶
Many commands that can work on files in the working tree and/or in the index can take --cached and/or --index options. Sometimes people incorrectly think that, because the index was originally called cache, these two are synonyms. They are not — these two options mean very different things.•The --cached option is used to ask a
command that usually works on files in the working tree to only work
with the index. For example, git grep, when used without a commit to specify
from which commit to look for strings in, usually works on files in the
working tree, but with the --cached option, it looks for strings in the
index.
•The --index option is used to ask a
command that usually works on files in the working tree to also affect
the index. For example, git stash apply usually merges changes recorded in a
stash to the working tree, but with the --index option, it also merges changes
to the index as well.
GIT¶
Part of the git(1) suite04/08/2014 | Git 1.9.1 |