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Here are some helpful hints and tips when working with git.

Creating a new repo on github using their API

The below is a curl request you can run from the command line. Just change the user and add the name:

curl -u ‘USERNAME’ https://api.github.com/user/repos -d '{"name”:”REPONAME”}’

Set the remote to the repo on github (add the username sometimes):

git remote add origin https://karava@github.com/karava/testCommandLineCreation.git

check the url of the origin:

git remote get-url origin

Reference: https://help.github.com/en/articles/adding-an-existing-project-to-github-using-the-command-line

Fetch online repositories from github

Fetch repos using this:

curl https://api.github.com/users/karava/repos | grep -w '"name"'

Alternatively here is a tool that can be used to fetch repositories, submit pull requests, fork repos all from the command-line https://hub.github.com. What are the advantages of git command line tools:

Automate workflows
Easily revert changes
Easily synchronise code

Some general tips:

write good git commit messages to give an indication what was changed
Understand git semantics such as the notion of ‘remote’ and ‘origin’

Questions:

How can you search commits/view commit history, or search view/merge history. For example if you want to go back in time and find out what was done, or what broke what? Or to find how some old code was implemented, or to find some code that was deleted. In particularly how would you find when code you deleted still lived in git?

Other useful git commands

git clone {url}
git fork - creates your own copy of a repo
git add (*)
git diff
git difftool
git commit
git commit -am “message” - Will add all the files you have changed and commit them together in one step. My question is what about if you have added new files?
git commit -m “sfsf” -m “dsfsd” - First message is title, second message is description
git status
git push
can be explicit and say:
git push origin master - Meaning push these changes to the master branch
git pull
git log - will give history of all the commits made previously and their messages

Git commands for undoing stuff

git reset --soft HEAD~1 - undo last commit. You may need to do a force push, if you pushed the last commit
git reset --hard [commit] - rollback and go back to an older version
git reset — hard origin/master - go back to the latest branch in the git repo
git revert [commit] - revert performs an operation that inverses the changes of a specific commit and then creates a commit stating that it did this reversion
git rm --cached {file} - remove file from git repo but keep on disk, don't forget to push, and use -r for recursive in multiple files in a folder
git checkout -- :/ discard all changes in repo
How to undo changes in some files only. Helpful, when reverting and redoing changes using git when multiple files were edited. See this link

Git tools

difftool is good for seeing diffs but only shows an individual file.
gitk is good to see all the open branches and how many commits have been on each.mumjm
git-gui supposedly a good tool for crafting commits. On mac need to add it in to work with it> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11722830/git-gui-not-working-after-installing-in-mac-e-g-mountain-lion
could also use VSCode but needs a little practice

Handling Merge conflicts

get picture from slides fix merge conflicts, usually keep yours or theirs? then commit the change the message will usually be “fixed merge conflicts” then git push

Branching

A Branch is a version of the repo. Each branch has its own commit history and current version

git branch - shows all branches of code
git branch {branch_name} - create a new branch. This does not check out the new branch.
git branch -D {branch_name} - delete branch
git checkout
git checkout -b {branch_name} - both creates and check-out a new branch at the same time
git merge {branch_name} - switch to master branch and then run this command
Pull Requests - Owner of repo can review changes and decide what to approve/reject
Branch tagging - To automate when complete a sprint - we should tag a branch as a new version, that is increment the tag.
When merge to master also automatically tag master with an incremented version
git remote prune origin - This gets rid of all the local repository branches that are not on the origin
git branch -vv | grep gone - Useful command to use when cleaning branches

Delete all pruned branches all in one useful command. Inspired by and explained in this post.

git fetch -p && git branch -vv | awk '/: gone]/{print $1}' | xargs git branch -d

Useful git stuff