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Advanced Git Features

Once you have mastered the basics, consider adding its more advanced features to your tool box.

Rebase

Rebase is a powerful, but if used incorrectly it can permanently mess up your Git history. Always remember to check the commit history with git log to ensure that it is what you want before force pushing it to the remote repository with git push -f.

Standard Mode

From git-rebase Documentation - Git

Assume the following history exists and the current branch is "topic":

          A---B---C topic
         /
    D---E---F---G main

From this point, the result of either of the following commands:

git rebase main
git rebase main topic

would be:

                  A'--B'--C' topic
                 /
    D---E---F---G main

If the local main branch is outdated with the remote main branch, use

git rebase origin/main

to rebase the current branch onto the remote main branch.

Interactive Mode

From git rebase | Atlassian Git Tutorial

Running git rebase with the -i flag begins an interactive rebasing session. Instead of blindly moving all of the commits to the new base, interactive rebasing gives you the opportunity to alter individual commits in the process. This lets you clean up history by removing, splitting, and altering an existing series of commits.

git rebase -i main

rebases the current branch onto main but uses an interactive rebasing session. This opens an editor where you can enter commands for each commit to be rebased. These commands determine how individual commits will be transferred to the new base. You can also reorder the commit listing to change the order of the commits themselves. Once you've specified commands for each commit in the rebase, Git will begin playing back commits applying the rebase commands.

Interactive Rebasing Edit Commands 
pick 2231360 some old commit
pick ee2adc2 Adds new feature

# Rebase 2cf755d..ee2adc2 onto 2cf755d (9 commands)
#
# Commands:
# p, pick = use commit
# r, reword = use commit, but edit the commit message
# e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending
# s, squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit
# f, fixup = like "squash", but discard this commit's log message
# x, exec = run command (the rest of the line) using shell
# d, drop = remove commit

Resolving Conflicts

From git-rebase Documentation - Git

In case of conflict, git rebase will stop at the first problematic commit and leave conflict markers in the tree. You can use git diff to locate the markers (<<<<<<) and make edits to resolve the conflict. For each file you edit, you need to tell Git that the conflict has been resolved, typically this would be done with

git add <filename>

After resolving the conflict manually and updating the index with the desired resolution, you can continue the rebasing process with

git rebase --continue

Alternatively, you can undo the git rebase with

git rebase --abort

Remote Repositories

There may be cases where you want to keep mirrors of your repository.

  • The original remote repository is given the identifier origin by default
Command Description
git remote add <repo name> <repo base url>.git Add a remote repository and give it the identifier <repo name>
git push <repo name> --all Push all branches to a remote repository
git remote -v List remote repositories
git remote remove <repo name> Remove a remote repository

Submodules

Add a Git repository inside another Git repository, usually to serve as a dependency.

Command Description
git submodule add <repo base url>.git Add a repository as a submodule of the current repository
git diff --submodule Better diff for submodules from the parent repository
git submodule update --remote --merge Update submodules to their latest remote commits
git submodule update --init --recursive Recursively initialize and update submodules to the commits in the remote parent repository
git clone --recurse-submodules <repo base url>.git Clone a repository and recursively initialize all its submodules

Resources:

Tags

Tag a commit. I usually create tags as part of publishing a release on GitHub, but the CLI commands may come in handy if you want to delete a release and its associated tag.

Command Description
git tag -d <tag name> Delete local tag
git tag -a <tag name> -m "<description>" Create an annotated tag for the current commit
git push --tags Push tags to the remote repository
git show <tag name> See tag information
git checkout <tag name> Checkout to the commit that a tag points to

Resources:

Work Trees

Git work trees allow you to have allow you to develop multiple branches of a repository at the same time.

Command Description
git clone --bare <repo base url>.git Clone a repository as a bare repository
git worktree add <directory> Create a work tree at the specified location, checking out to the branch of the same name or creating one if it does not exist
git worktree add -b <branch name> <directory> Same as above, but needed if <branch name> contains forward slashes
git worktree list List all work trees
git worktree remove <directory> Remove a worktree at the specified location

Resources: