git

some commands I always forget

git lfs / git large file storage

put large files in a git repository:

git lfs install
git lfs track '.assets/**'

uninstall it with:

git lfs uninstall

clone and pull without full history (shallow clone)

clone:

git clone --depth 1 <repository-url>

fetch/pull:

git fetch --depth 1

git pull --depth 1

pull from remote and clean/remove untracked changes

git fetch origin
git reset --hard origin/main
git clean -fd

find deleted file

in order to restore something, you might want to know when it was deleted…:

git --no-pager log -1 -- path/to/file.txt

to just get the hash:

git --no-pager log --pretty=%H -1 -- path/to/file.txt

you might also want to look into –diff-filter for more options like only deleted, modified files etc.

the -1 limits the output to the last/most current commit

revert / restore single file

why wasn’t this on the top, what the… let’s say you want to restore a file from a previous commit. get the hash with git log and do:

git checkout 34973274ccef6ab4dfaaf86599792fa9c3fe4689 filename.md

mtls / client certificate authentication

to use mutual tls client certificate authentication with git, update your ~/.gitconfig file and add a block with the hostname in there and set the path to the certificate

[http "https://your.securet.git.host.com"]
sslCert = "/Users/username/.cert.pem"
sslKey = "/Users/username/.key.pem"
sslVerify = true
sslCertPasswordProtected = false

thanks

delete branch locally and remotely

git push --delete <remote_name> <branch_name>
git branch -d <branch_name>

example:

git push --delete origin short_url
git branch -d short_url

push all branches

git push --all <remote>

for example:

git push --all origin

separate .git directory

syncthing solutions such as dropbox / icloud drive often don’t play well with all the files and frequent changes in a .git directory, with --separate-git-dir the .git directory can be stored outside of these systems

git init --separate-git-dir=/path/to/dot-git-directory .

stackoverflow link

git submodules

too confusing.

add git submodule

git submodule add https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki.git

init git submodules

git submodule init
git submodule update

remove git submodules

just get rid of them, I just can’t wrap my head around this stuff:

# Remove the submodule entry from .git/config
git submodule deinit -f path/to/submodule

# Remove the submodule directory from the superproject's .git/modules directory
rm -rf .git/modules/path/to/submodule

# Remove the entry in .gitmodules and remove the submodule directory located at path/to/submodule
git rm -f path/to/submodule

yes, this is from here

delete file / folder from history

well, things happen from time to time. I just wanted to get rid of a folder and move it to git lfs

git filter-branch -f --index-filter "git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch .assets" -- --all

also cleanup remote:

rm -rf .git/refs/original/
git reflog expire --expire=now --all
git gc --aggressive --prune=now
git push --all --force

source

create tar archive from repo

git archive --format=tar HEAD -o filename.tar

delete files part of .gitignore

if you added some extensions, files and/or folders to your .gitignore file later on and want to clean up the whole repo, there’s a lot of stuff on stack overflow, but this one does what I wanted (check my gitignore file, match all the things in there, delete everything that matches):

git ls-files --ignored --exclude-standard -z | xargs -0 git rm --cached

thank you

change e-mail address for commits

install git-filter-repo with pip:

pip install git-filter-repo

assume you want to change the e-mail address for all commits from old@example.com to new@example.com for whatever reason:

git-filter-repo --replace-refs delete-no-add --partial --email-callback 'return email.replace(b"old@example.com", b"new@example.com")'

if it’s also a repository stored on a remote server you need to force push with git push --force

to change the name, you can also use --name-callback 'return name.replace(b"OldName", b"NewName")' and/or combine the two of them and do more.

source

multiple profiles

… different usernames and e-mail addresses for different folders.

create a new folder or use an existing one and create a file for your git config, such as .gitconfig-personal in ~/private: ~/private/.gitconfig-personal

[user]
  name = Your Name
  email = your@personal.email

now update your global .gitconfig file, usually stored in your home folder, so ~/.gitconfig

[user]
  name = Your Name
  email = your@work.email

now add the following to this file:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/private/"]
  path = ~/private/.gitconfig-personal

ideally, all repositories within ~/private/ now use the personal gitconfig and everything else the global config.

check author and commiter identity

check which user name and email would be used in a given folder/repo. Useful if you’re using multiple profiles.

printf 'author: %s\ncommitter: %s\n' "$(git var GIT_AUTHOR_IDENT)" "$(git var GIT_COMMITTER_IDENT)"

rename branch name (master to main)

… reminder for myself:

doing this just for a local repo, say if it was generated by a script:

git branch -m master main

for an existing repo on the local system and remote:

git branch -m master main
git fetch origin
git branch -u origin/main main
git remote set-head origin -a

set is as a default for your local git config:

git config --global init.defaultBranch main

find deleted contents / file in history

so you deleted this one file you never thought about needing again. well, here you a couple of months later needing that file and you remember a string in there. let’s find it. but wait, since we’re going to use git grep, you can also pass or remove -i to ignore or not ignore case distinctions of strings.

git grep -i <regexp> $(git rev-list --all)

if you get a result and want to restore the file, the output provides you a commit hash and the file path. To restore it, do this:

git checkout 7e942ad6eabe34289cbc791e0655f79d3c439fe8:src/folder/your-file.yaml

if you know even more about the missing file, you can also search a sub folder for it:

git grep -i <regexp> $(git rev-list --all -- lib/util) -- lib/util

list changed files from past N commits

git diff --name-only HEAD~10 HEAD

show how current file is stored IN git repository

read a file how it’s currently stored in the git repository itself, useful if you use filters to encrypt data with utilities like sops to double-check:

git show main:foobar/.env

main is the branch name

git credentials

to store git credentials for remotes on disk, run this:

git config --global credential.helper store

if you’re on macOS, you can use the keychain helper as well to store them more securely:

git config --global credential.helper osxkeychain

disable pager

just want a list of things?

git --no-pager branch -a