Common Git Commands

This page contains common commands used to work with GitHub repositories via git. This is by no means an exhaustive list of commands.

Basics

git clone https://url-to-repo OR git@github.com:repo/location.git

  • Clone a GitHub repo. Two methods: HTTPS or SSH. SSH is recommended as it will not require a token every time you interact with the repo (push/pull/etc) on MSI. Learn how to set up SSH with GitHub on this page. If you do use HTTPS on MSI you will need to create a personal access token and enter it every time you interact with the repo.
  • If you would like to only clone a specific branch, add -b branch_name --single-branch after clone.

git status

  • Check the status of the repo you're working on. This will tell you what changes have been made and what branch you're on.

git checkout -b branch_name

  • Move to a new/different GitHub branch. If the branch already exists, do not include the -b.

  • git branch new_branch_name also creates a new branch but doesn't also move you to the new branch

git add file_or_folder

  • Add changes from a specific file/folder to your commit. To add multiple files at once there are several options:

    • -A to add all new, modified, and deleted files

    • -u to add all modified and deleted files but not new files

git commit -m "commit message"

  • Commit a set of changes, make sure you have a descriptive message

git push

  • Push your commit to the GitHub repo

  • If you made a new branch locally, to add it to the origin, run git push --set-upstream origin branch-name

git pull

  • Pull the contents of the GitHub repo to your local computer

Advanced

If your branch is out of date from the main branch:

git checkout main
git pull main
git checkout branch_to_update
git rebase main

If a branch name changed on GitHub but it still has the old name locally and you can no longer push to/pull from the old branch name:

git branch -m old_name new_name
git fetch origin
git branch -u origin/new_name new_name
git remote set-head origin -a

If you only want to clone a specific subdirectory from a repository:

mkdir <repo>
cd <repo>
git init
git remote add -f origin <repo-url>
git config core.sparseCheckout true
echo "some/dir/" >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
echo "another/dir/" >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
cat .git/info/sparse-checkout # Check which folders you've added
git pull origin master

If you have a version of Git above 2.25.0, there is a git sparse-checkout command. These replace the git config and echo commands from above. 

git sparse-checkout init
# Same as git config core.sparseCheckout true
git sparse-checkout set "some/dir"
# Same as echo "some/dir/" >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
git sparse-checkout list
# Same as cat .git/info/sparse-checkout