{"id":2123,"date":"2015-02-27T23:48:54","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T23:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/?p=2123"},"modified":"2015-03-06T19:24:51","modified_gmt":"2015-03-06T19:24:51","slug":"common-git-screwupsquestions-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/common-git-screwupsquestions-solutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Most common git screwups\/questions and solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was looking to learn a bit more about the parts of git I’ve not ventured into yet. What better way that looking the most common ways people screw them up and how to fix the resulting problems! Here’s a short list, compiled from my own experience and issues I’ve come across on the Internet.<\/p>\n

I wrote the wrong thing in a commit message<\/h2>\n

If the commit hasn’t been push you can do the following, which will allow you to edit the message on the most recent commit:<\/p>\n

\r\ngit commit --amend\r\n<\/pre>\n
How can I undo the last commit?<\/h2>\n
You can use git reset e.g.:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit reset --hard HEAD~1\r\n<\/pre>\n
HEAD~1 means HEAD-1 commit. It should be noted that this is the nuclear option, and any changes you made will be discarded. If you want to keep your changes in the working tree use:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit reset --soft HEAD~1\r\n<\/pre>\n
If you’ve already published your commits, you should use revert. This is create new commits undoing the last change:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit revert HEAD~1..HEAD\r\ngit revert commitid\r\n<\/pre>\n
Delete a Git branch remotely<\/h2>\n
\r\ngit push origin --delete branchname\r\n<\/pre>\n
What are the differences between ‘git pull’ and ‘git fetch’?<\/h2>\n
git pull, is git fetch followed by git merge. git fetch gets the remote changes, they get kept under refs\/remotes\/\/. However it doesn’t affect your local branches, and won’t change your working copy. git pull then merges these changes with the local copy.<\/p>\n
How do I undo a ‘git add’ before committing<\/h2>\n
You did a “git add filename” accidentally and want to undo it before committing your change. You can simply do:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit reset filename\r\n<\/pre>\n
To unstage your changes to that file.<\/p>\n
How do I deal with merge conflicts<\/h2>\n
Use “git mergetool” which gives a handy interface for solving merge conflicts.<\/p>\n
Remove all local untracked files (and directories) from your local clone<\/h2>\n
Careful! You might want to take a backup before doing this:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit clean -f -d\r\n<\/pre>\n
Clone all remote branches<\/h2>\n
You probably already have, they’re just hiding! Use the following to see all the branches:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit branch -a\r\n<\/pre>\n
You can then use “git checkout origin\/branchname” to take a look at the branch. Or “git checkout -b branchname origin\/branchname”. To create a local tracking branch.<\/p>\n
Rename local branch?<\/h2>\n
git branch -m oldname newname<\/pre>\n
Revert to a previous Git commit<\/h2>\n
You can use reset as above to revert to a previous commit, this assumes you mean go back to where you were before permanently rather than just take a look (for that you want to checkout an old version). The commit ID, should be as shown in the output of “git log”.  <\/p>\n
git reset --hard commitid<\/pre>\n
Again this will discard all changes in your working tree, so make sure this is really what you want to do! Or look at using –soft rather than –hard.<\/p>\n
Remove a git submodule<\/h2>\n
Creating a submodule is pretty straight-forward, but deleting them less so the commands you need are:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit submodule deinit submodulename   \r\ngit rm submodulename\r\ngit rm --cached submodulename\r\nrm -rf .git\/modules\/submodulename\r\n<\/pre>\n
Over-write local files when doing a git pull<\/h2>\n
Git reset is your friend again:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit fetch --all\r\ngit reset --hard origin\/master\r\n<\/pre>\n
How can I add an empty directory to my repository?<\/h2>\n
You can’t! git doesn’t support this, but there’s a hack. You can create a .gitignore file in the directory with the following contents:<\/p>\n
\r\n# Ignore everything in this directory\r\n*\r\n# Except this file\r\n!.gitignore\r\n<\/pre>\n
I don’t believe it actually matters what’s in the .gitignore (and this .gitignore will ignore all files).<\/p>\n
git export, exporting the source code as with “svn export”<\/h2>\n
Use git archive e.g:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit archive --format zip --output \/full\/path\/to\/zipfile.zip master \r\n<\/pre>\n
Discard all my unchecked in changes<\/h2>\n
\r\ngit checkout -- .\r\n<\/pre>\n
Create a new remote branch from the current local one<\/h2>\n
\r\ngit config --global push.default current\r\ngit push -u\r\n<\/pre>\n
Restore a deleted file<\/h2>\n
First find the commit when the file last existed:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- filename\r\n<\/pre>\n
Then checkout that file<\/p>\n
\r\ngit checkout deletingcommitid^ -- filename\r\n<\/pre>\n
Revert a single file to a specific previous commit<\/h2>\n
Similar to the above, but a bit simpler:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit checkout commitid filename\r\n<\/pre>\n
Make git ignore permissions\/filemode changes<\/h2>\n
\r\ngit config core.fileMode false\r\n<\/pre>\n
Get git to remember my password when checking out with https<\/h2>\n
It’ll only remember your password for 15mins:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit config --global credential.helper cache\r\n<\/pre>\n
You can make it remember your password longer with:<\/p>\n
\r\ngit config --global credential.helper \"cache --timeout=XXXX\"\r\n<\/pre>\n
Take a quick look at an old revision of a single file<\/h2>\n
\r\ngit show commitid:filename\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was looking to learn a bit more about the parts of git I’ve not ventured into yet. What better way that looking the most common ways people screw them up and how to fix the resulting problems! Here’s a short list, compiled from my own experience and issues I’ve come across on the Internet. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1RRoU-yf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2123"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2214,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123\/revisions\/2214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}