git --git-dir=a.git --work-tree=b -C c status git --git-dir=c/a.git --work-tree=c/b status
git - the stupid content tracker
git [--version] [--help] [-C <path>] [-c <name>=<value>] [--exec-path[=<path>]] [--html-path] [--man-path] [--info-path] [-p|--paginate|--no-pager] [--no-replace-objects] [--bare] [--git-dir=<path>] [--work-tree=<path>] [--namespace=<name>] [--super-prefix=<path>] <command> [<args>]
Git is a fast, scalable, distributed revision control system with an unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations and full access to internals.
See gittutorial[7] to get started, then see giteveryday[7] for a useful minimum set of commands. The Git User’s Manual has a more in-depth introduction.
After you mastered the basic concepts, you can come back to this page to learn what commands Git offers. You can learn more about individual Git commands with "git help command". gitcli[7] manual page gives you an overview of the command-line command syntax.
A formatted and hyperlinked copy of the latest Git documentation can be viewed at https://git.github.io/htmldocs/git.html
.
Prints the Git suite version that the git
program came from.
Prints the synopsis and a list of the most commonly used commands. If the option --all
or -a
is given then all available commands are printed. If a Git command is named this option will bring up the manual page for that command.
Other options are available to control how the manual page is displayed. See git-help[1] for more information, because git --help ...
is converted internally into git
help ...
.
Run as if git was started in <path>
instead of the current working directory. When multiple -C
options are given, each subsequent non-absolute -C <path>
is interpreted relative to the preceding -C
<path>
.
This option affects options that expect path name like --git-dir
and --work-tree
in that their interpretations of the path names would be made relative to the working directory caused by the -C
option. For example the following invocations are equivalent:
git --git-dir=a.git --work-tree=b -C c status git --git-dir=c/a.git --work-tree=c/b status
Pass a configuration parameter to the command. The value given will override values from configuration files. The <name> is expected in the same format as listed by git config
(subkeys separated by dots).
Note that omitting the =
in git -c foo.bar ...
is allowed and sets foo.bar
to the boolean true value (just like [foo]bar
would in a config file). Including the equals but with an empty value (like git -c
foo.bar= ...
) sets foo.bar
to the empty string which git config
--bool
will convert to false
.
Path to wherever your core Git programs are installed. This can also be controlled by setting the GIT_EXEC_PATH environment variable. If no path is given, git
will print the current setting and then exit.
Print the path, without trailing slash, where Git’s HTML documentation is installed and exit.
Print the manpath (see man(1)
) for the man pages for this version of Git and exit.
Print the path where the Info files documenting this version of Git are installed and exit.
Pipe all output into less
(or if set, $PAGER) if standard output is a terminal. This overrides the pager.<cmd>
configuration options (see the "Configuration Mechanism" section below).
Do not pipe Git output into a pager.
Set the path to the repository. This can also be controlled by setting the GIT_DIR
environment variable. It can be an absolute path or relative path to current working directory.
Set the path to the working tree. It can be an absolute path or a path relative to the current working directory. This can also be controlled by setting the GIT_WORK_TREE environment variable and the core.worktree configuration variable (see core.worktree in git-config[1] for a more detailed discussion).
Set the Git namespace. See gitnamespaces[7] for more details. Equivalent to setting the GIT_NAMESPACE
environment variable.
Currently for internal use only. Set a prefix which gives a path from above a repository down to its root. One use is to give submodules context about the superproject that invoked it.
Treat the repository as a bare repository. If GIT_DIR environment is not set, it is set to the current working directory.
Do not use replacement refs to replace Git objects. See git-replace[1] for more information.
Treat pathspecs literally (i.e. no globbing, no pathspec magic). This is equivalent to setting the GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS
environment variable to 1
.
Add "glob" magic to all pathspec. This is equivalent to setting the GIT_GLOB_PATHSPECS
environment variable to 1
. Disabling globbing on individual pathspecs can be done using pathspec magic ":(literal)"
Add "literal" magic to all pathspec. This is equivalent to setting the GIT_NOGLOB_PATHSPECS
environment variable to 1
. Enabling globbing on individual pathspecs can be done using pathspec magic ":(glob)"
Add "icase" magic to all pathspec. This is equivalent to setting the GIT_ICASE_PATHSPECS
environment variable to 1
.
Do not perform optional operations that require locks. This is equivalent to setting the GIT_OPTIONAL_LOCKS
to 0
.
We divide Git into high level ("porcelain") commands and low level ("plumbing") commands.
We separate the porcelain commands into the main commands and some ancillary user utilities.
Add file contents to the index
Apply a series of patches from a mailbox
Create an archive of files from a named tree
Use binary search to find the commit that introduced a bug
List, create, or delete branches
Move objects and refs by archive
Switch branches or restore working tree files
Apply the changes introduced by some existing commits
Graphical alternative to git-commit
Remove untracked files from the working tree
Clone a repository into a new directory
Record changes to the repository
Describe a commit using the most recent tag reachable from it
Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc
Download objects and refs from another repository
Prepare patches for e-mail submission
Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository
Print lines matching a pattern
A portable graphical interface to Git
Create an empty Git repository or reinitialize an existing one
The Git repository browser
Show commit logs
Join two or more development histories together
Move or rename a file, a directory, or a symlink
Add or inspect object notes
Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch
Update remote refs along with associated objects
Reapply commits on top of another base tip
Reset current HEAD to the specified state
Revert some existing commits
Remove files from the working tree and from the index
Summarize git log
output
Show various types of objects
Stash the changes in a dirty working directory away
Show the working tree status
Initialize, update or inspect submodules
Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed with GPG
Manage multiple working trees
Manipulators:
Get and set repository or global options
Git data exporter
Backend for fast Git data importers
Rewrite branches
Run merge conflict resolution tools to resolve merge conflicts
Pack heads and tags for efficient repository access
Prune all unreachable objects from the object database
Manage reflog information
Manage set of tracked repositories
Pack unpacked objects in a repository
Create, list, delete refs to replace objects
Interrogators:
Annotate file lines with commit information
Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file
Find commits yet to be applied to upstream
Count unpacked number of objects and their disk consumption
Show changes using common diff tools
Verifies the connectivity and validity of the objects in the database
Extract commit ID from an archive created using git-archive
Display help information about Git
Instantly browse your working repository in gitweb
Show three-way merge without touching index
Reuse recorded resolution of conflicted merges
Pick out and massage parameters
Show branches and their commits
Check the GPG signature of commits
Check the GPG signature of tags
Git web interface (web frontend to Git repositories)
Show logs with difference each commit introduces
These commands are to interact with foreign SCM and with other people via patch over e-mail.
Import an Arch repository into Git
Export a single commit to a CVS checkout
Salvage your data out of another SCM people love to hate
A CVS server emulator for Git
Send a collection of patches from stdin to an IMAP folder
Import from and submit to Perforce repositories
Applies a quilt patchset onto the current branch
Generates a summary of pending changes
Send a collection of patches as emails
Bidirectional operation between a Subversion repository and Git
Although Git includes its own porcelain layer, its low-level commands are sufficient to support development of alternative porcelains. Developers of such porcelains might start by reading about git-update-index[1] and git-read-tree[1].
The interface (input, output, set of options and the semantics) to these low-level commands are meant to be a lot more stable than Porcelain level commands, because these commands are primarily for scripted use. The interface to Porcelain commands on the other hand are subject to change in order to improve the end user experience.
The following description divides the low-level commands into commands that manipulate objects (in the repository, index, and working tree), commands that interrogate and compare objects, and commands that move objects and references between repositories.
Apply a patch to files and/or to the index
Copy files from the index to the working tree
Create a new commit object
Compute object ID and optionally creates a blob from a file
Build pack index file for an existing packed archive
Run a three-way file merge
Run a merge for files needing merging
Creates a tag object
Build a tree-object from ls-tree formatted text
Create a packed archive of objects
Remove extra objects that are already in pack files
Reads tree information into the index
Read, modify and delete symbolic refs
Unpack objects from a packed archive
Register file contents in the working tree to the index
Update the object name stored in a ref safely
Create a tree object from the current index
Provide content or type and size information for repository objects
Compares files in the working tree and the index
Compare a tree to the working tree or index
Compares the content and mode of blobs found via two tree objects
Output information on each ref
Show information about files in the index and the working tree
List references in a remote repository
List the contents of a tree object
Find as good common ancestors as possible for a merge
Find symbolic names for given revs
Find redundant pack files
Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order
Show packed archive index
List references in a local repository
Creates a temporary file with a blob’s contents
Show a Git logical variable
Validate packed Git archive files
In general, the interrogate commands do not touch the files in the working tree.
A really simple server for Git repositories
Receive missing objects from another repository
Server side implementation of Git over HTTP
Push objects over Git protocol to another repository
Update auxiliary info file to help dumb servers
The following are helper commands used by the above; end users typically do not use them directly.
Download from a remote Git repository via HTTP
Push objects over HTTP/DAV to another repository
Routines to help parsing remote repository access parameters
Receive what is pushed into the repository
Restricted login shell for Git-only SSH access
Send archive back to git-archive
Send objects packed back to git-fetch-pack
These are internal helper commands used by other commands; end users typically do not use them directly.
Display gitattributes information
Debug gitignore / exclude files
Show canonical names and email addresses of contacts
Ensures that a reference name is well formed
Display data in columns
Retrieve and store user credentials
Helper to temporarily store passwords in memory
Helper to store credentials on disk
Produce a merge commit message
add or parse structured information in commit messages
Extracts patch and authorship from a single e-mail message
Simple UNIX mbox splitter program
The standard helper program to use with git-merge-index
Compute unique ID for a patch
Git’s i18n setup code for shell scripts
Common Git shell script setup code
Remove unnecessary whitespace
Git uses a simple text format to store customizations that are per repository and are per user. Such a configuration file may look like this:
# # A '#' or ';' character indicates a comment. # ; core variables [core] ; Don't trust file modes filemode = false ; user identity [user] name = "Junio C Hamano" email = "[email protected]"
Various commands read from the configuration file and adjust their operation accordingly. See git-config[1] for a list and more details about the configuration mechanism.
Indicates the object name for any type of object.
Indicates a blob object name.
Indicates a tree object name.
Indicates a commit object name.
Indicates a tree, commit or tag object name. A command that takes a <tree-ish> argument ultimately wants to operate on a <tree> object but automatically dereferences <commit> and <tag> objects that point at a <tree>.
Indicates a commit or tag object name. A command that takes a <commit-ish> argument ultimately wants to operate on a <commit> object but automatically dereferences <tag> objects that point at a <commit>.
Indicates that an object type is required. Currently one of: blob
, tree
, commit
, or tag
.
Indicates a filename - almost always relative to the root of the tree structure GIT_INDEX_FILE
describes.
Any Git command accepting any <object> can also use the following symbolic notation:
indicates the head of the current branch.
a valid tag name
(i.e. a refs/tags/<tag>
reference).
a valid head name
(i.e. a refs/heads/<head>
reference).
For a more complete list of ways to spell object names, see "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in gitrevisions[7].
Please see the gitrepository-layout[5] document.
Read githooks[5] for more details about each hook.
Higher level SCMs may provide and manage additional information in the $GIT_DIR
.
Please see gitglossary[7].
Various Git commands use the following environment variables:
These environment variables apply to all
core Git commands. Nb: it is worth noting that they may be used/overridden by SCMS sitting above Git so take care if using a foreign front-end.
GIT_INDEX_FILE
This environment allows the specification of an alternate index file. If not specified, the default of $GIT_DIR/index
is used.
GIT_INDEX_VERSION
This environment variable allows the specification of an index version for new repositories. It won’t affect existing index files. By default index file version 2 or 3 is used. See git-update-index[1] for more information.
GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY
If the object storage directory is specified via this environment variable then the sha1 directories are created underneath - otherwise the default $GIT_DIR/objects
directory is used.
GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES
Due to the immutable nature of Git objects, old objects can be archived into shared, read-only directories. This variable specifies a ":" separated (on Windows ";" separated) list of Git object directories which can be used to search for Git objects. New objects will not be written to these directories.
Entries that begin with `"` (double-quote) will be interpreted as C-style quoted paths, removing leading and trailing double-quotes and respecting backslash escapes. E.g., the value `"path-with-\"-and-:-in-it":vanilla-path` has two paths: `path-with-"-and-:-in-it` and `vanilla-path`.
GIT_DIR
If the GIT_DIR
environment variable is set then it specifies a path to use instead of the default .git
for the base of the repository. The --git-dir
command-line option also sets this value.
GIT_WORK_TREE
Set the path to the root of the working tree. This can also be controlled by the --work-tree
command-line option and the core.worktree configuration variable.
GIT_NAMESPACE
Set the Git namespace; see gitnamespaces[7] for details. The --namespace
command-line option also sets this value.
GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES
This should be a colon-separated list of absolute paths. If set, it is a list of directories that Git should not chdir up into while looking for a repository directory (useful for excluding slow-loading network directories). It will not exclude the current working directory or a GIT_DIR set on the command line or in the environment. Normally, Git has to read the entries in this list and resolve any symlink that might be present in order to compare them with the current directory. However, if even this access is slow, you can add an empty entry to the list to tell Git that the subsequent entries are not symlinks and needn’t be resolved; e.g., GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES=/maybe/symlink::/very/slow/non/symlink
.
GIT_DISCOVERY_ACROSS_FILESYSTEM
When run in a directory that does not have ".git" repository directory, Git tries to find such a directory in the parent directories to find the top of the working tree, but by default it does not cross filesystem boundaries. This environment variable can be set to true to tell Git not to stop at filesystem boundaries. Like GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES
, this will not affect an explicit repository directory set via GIT_DIR
or on the command line.
GIT_COMMON_DIR
If this variable is set to a path, non-worktree files that are normally in $GIT_DIR will be taken from this path instead. Worktree-specific files such as HEAD or index are taken from $GIT_DIR. See gitrepository-layout[5] and git-worktree[1] for details. This variable has lower precedence than other path variables such as GIT_INDEX_FILE, GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY…
GIT_AUTHOR_NAME
GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL
GIT_AUTHOR_DATE
GIT_COMMITTER_NAME
GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL
GIT_COMMITTER_DATE
GIT_DIFF_OPTS
Only valid setting is "--unified=??" or "-u??" to set the number of context lines shown when a unified diff is created. This takes precedence over any "-U" or "--unified" option value passed on the Git diff command line.
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
When the environment variable GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
is set, the program named by it is called, instead of the diff invocation described above. For a path that is added, removed, or modified, GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
is called with 7 parameters:
path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode
where:
are files GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF can use to read the contents of <old|new>,
are the 40-hexdigit SHA-1 hashes,
are the octal representation of the file modes.
The file parameters can point at the user’s working file (e.g. new-file
in "git-diff-files"), /dev/null
(e.g. old-file
when a new file is added), or a temporary file (e.g. old-file
in the index). GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
should not worry about unlinking the temporary file --- it is removed when GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
exits.
For a path that is unmerged, GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
is called with 1 parameter, <path>.
For each path GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
is called, two environment variables, GIT_DIFF_PATH_COUNTER
and GIT_DIFF_PATH_TOTAL
are set.
GIT_DIFF_PATH_COUNTER
A 1-based counter incremented by one for every path.
GIT_DIFF_PATH_TOTAL
The total number of paths.
GIT_MERGE_VERBOSITY
A number controlling the amount of output shown by the recursive merge strategy. Overrides merge.verbosity. See git-merge[1]
GIT_PAGER
This environment variable overrides $PAGER
. If it is set to an empty string or to the value "cat", Git will not launch a pager. See also the core.pager
option in git-config[1].
GIT_EDITOR
This environment variable overrides $EDITOR
and $VISUAL
. It is used by several Git commands when, on interactive mode, an editor is to be launched. See also git-var[1] and the core.editor
option in git-config[1].
GIT_SSH
GIT_SSH_COMMAND
If either of these environment variables is set then git fetch
and git push
will use the specified command instead of ssh
when they need to connect to a remote system. The command will be given exactly two or four arguments: the username@host
(or just host
) from the URL and the shell command to execute on that remote system, optionally preceded by -p
(literally) and the port
from the URL when it specifies something other than the default SSH port.
$GIT_SSH_COMMAND
takes precedence over $GIT_SSH
, and is interpreted by the shell, which allows additional arguments to be included. $GIT_SSH
on the other hand must be just the path to a program (which can be a wrapper shell script, if additional arguments are needed).
Usually it is easier to configure any desired options through your personal .ssh/config
file. Please consult your ssh documentation for further details.
GIT_SSH_VARIANT
If this environment variable is set, it overrides Git’s autodetection whether GIT_SSH
/GIT_SSH_COMMAND
/core.sshCommand
refer to OpenSSH, plink or tortoiseplink. This variable overrides the config setting ssh.variant
that serves the same purpose.
GIT_ASKPASS
If this environment variable is set, then Git commands which need to acquire passwords or passphrases (e.g. for HTTP or IMAP authentication) will call this program with a suitable prompt as command-line argument and read the password from its STDOUT. See also the core.askPass
option in git-config[1].
GIT_TERMINAL_PROMPT
If this environment variable is set to 0
, git will not prompt on the terminal (e.g., when asking for HTTP authentication).
GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM
Whether to skip reading settings from the system-wide $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig
file. This environment variable can be used along with $HOME
and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
to create a predictable environment for a picky script, or you can set it temporarily to avoid using a buggy /etc/gitconfig
file while waiting for someone with sufficient permissions to fix it.
GIT_FLUSH
If this environment variable is set to "1", then commands such as git blame
(in incremental mode), git rev-list
, git log
, git check-attr
and git check-ignore
will force a flush of the output stream after each record have been flushed. If this variable is set to "0", the output of these commands will be done using completely buffered I/O. If this environment variable is not set, Git will choose buffered or record-oriented flushing based on whether stdout appears to be redirected to a file or not.
GIT_TRACE
Enables general trace messages, e.g. alias expansion, built-in command execution and external command execution.
If this variable is set to "1", "2" or "true" (comparison is case insensitive), trace messages will be printed to stderr.
If the variable is set to an integer value greater than 2 and lower than 10 (strictly) then Git will interpret this value as an open file descriptor and will try to write the trace messages into this file descriptor.
Alternatively, if the variable is set to an absolute path (starting with a /
character), Git will interpret this as a file path and will try to write the trace messages into it.
Unsetting the variable, or setting it to empty, "0" or "false" (case insensitive) disables trace messages.
GIT_TRACE_PACK_ACCESS
Enables trace messages for all accesses to any packs. For each access, the pack file name and an offset in the pack is recorded. This may be helpful for troubleshooting some pack-related performance problems. See GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_PACKET
Enables trace messages for all packets coming in or out of a given program. This can help with debugging object negotiation or other protocol issues. Tracing is turned off at a packet starting with "PACK" (but see GIT_TRACE_PACKFILE
below). See GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_PACKFILE
Enables tracing of packfiles sent or received by a given program. Unlike other trace output, this trace is verbatim: no headers, and no quoting of binary data. You almost certainly want to direct into a file (e.g., GIT_TRACE_PACKFILE=/tmp/my.pack
) rather than displaying it on the terminal or mixing it with other trace output.
Note that this is currently only implemented for the client side of clones and fetches.
GIT_TRACE_PERFORMANCE
Enables performance related trace messages, e.g. total execution time of each Git command. See GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_SETUP
Enables trace messages printing the .git, working tree and current working directory after Git has completed its setup phase. See GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_SHALLOW
Enables trace messages that can help debugging fetching / cloning of shallow repositories. See GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_TRACE_CURL
Enables a curl full trace dump of all incoming and outgoing data, including descriptive information, of the git transport protocol. This is similar to doing curl --trace-ascii
on the command line. This option overrides setting the GIT_CURL_VERBOSE
environment variable. See GIT_TRACE
for available trace output options.
GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS
Setting this variable to 1
will cause Git to treat all pathspecs literally, rather than as glob patterns. For example, running GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS=1 git log -- '*.c'
will search for commits that touch the path *.c
, not any paths that the glob *.c
matches. You might want this if you are feeding literal paths to Git (e.g., paths previously given to you by git ls-tree
, --raw
diff output, etc).
GIT_GLOB_PATHSPECS
Setting this variable to 1
will cause Git to treat all pathspecs as glob patterns (aka "glob" magic).
GIT_NOGLOB_PATHSPECS
Setting this variable to 1
will cause Git to treat all pathspecs as literal (aka "literal" magic).
GIT_ICASE_PATHSPECS
Setting this variable to 1
will cause Git to treat all pathspecs as case-insensitive.
GIT_REFLOG_ACTION
When a ref is updated, reflog entries are created to keep track of the reason why the ref was updated (which is typically the name of the high-level command that updated the ref), in addition to the old and new values of the ref. A scripted Porcelain command can use set_reflog_action helper function in git-sh-setup
to set its name to this variable when it is invoked as the top level command by the end user, to be recorded in the body of the reflog.
GIT_REF_PARANOIA
If set to 1
, include broken or badly named refs when iterating over lists of refs. In a normal, non-corrupted repository, this does nothing. However, enabling it may help git to detect and abort some operations in the presence of broken refs. Git sets this variable automatically when performing destructive operations like git-prune[1]. You should not need to set it yourself unless you want to be paranoid about making sure an operation has touched every ref (e.g., because you are cloning a repository to make a backup).
GIT_ALLOW_PROTOCOL
If set to a colon-separated list of protocols, behave as if protocol.allow
is set to never
, and each of the listed protocols has protocol.<name>.allow
set to always
(overriding any existing configuration). In other words, any protocol not mentioned will be disallowed (i.e., this is a whitelist, not a blacklist). See the description of protocol.allow
in git-config[1] for more details.
GIT_PROTOCOL_FROM_USER
Set to 0 to prevent protocols used by fetch/push/clone which are configured to the user
state. This is useful to restrict recursive submodule initialization from an untrusted repository or for programs which feed potentially-untrusted URLS to git commands. See git-config[1] for more details.
GIT_OPTIONAL_LOCKS
If set to 0
, Git will complete any requested operation without performing any optional sub-operations that require taking a lock. For example, this will prevent git status
from refreshing the index as a side effect. This is useful for processes running in the background which do not want to cause lock contention with other operations on the repository. Defaults to 1
.
GIT_REDIRECT_STDIN
GIT_REDIRECT_STDOUT
GIT_REDIRECT_STDERR
Windows-only: allow redirecting the standard input/output/error handles to paths specified by the environment variables. This is particularly useful in multi-threaded applications where the canonical way to pass standard handles via CreateProcess()
is not an option because it would require the handles to be marked inheritable (and consequently every spawned process would inherit them, possibly blocking regular Git operations). The primary intended use case is to use named pipes for communication (e.g. \\.\pipe\my-git-stdin-123
).
Two special values are supported: off
will simply close the corresponding standard handle, and if GIT_REDIRECT_STDERR
is 2>&1
, standard error will be redirected to the same handle as standard output.
More detail on the following is available from the Git concepts chapter of the user-manual and gitcore-tutorial[7].
A Git project normally consists of a working directory with a ".git" subdirectory at the top level. The .git directory contains, among other things, a compressed object database representing the complete history of the project, an "index" file which links that history to the current contents of the working tree, and named pointers into that history such as tags and branch heads.
The object database contains objects of three main types: blobs, which hold file data; trees, which point to blobs and other trees to build up directory hierarchies; and commits, which each reference a single tree and some number of parent commits.
The commit, equivalent to what other systems call a "changeset" or "version", represents a step in the project’s history, and each parent represents an immediately preceding step. Commits with more than one parent represent merges of independent lines of development.
All objects are named by the SHA-1 hash of their contents, normally written as a string of 40 hex digits. Such names are globally unique. The entire history leading up to a commit can be vouched for by signing just that commit. A fourth object type, the tag, is provided for this purpose.
When first created, objects are stored in individual files, but for efficiency may later be compressed together into "pack files".
Named pointers called refs mark interesting points in history. A ref may contain the SHA-1 name of an object or the name of another ref. Refs with names beginning ref/head/
contain the SHA-1 name of the most recent commit (or "head") of a branch under development. SHA-1 names of tags of interest are stored under ref/tags/
. A special ref named HEAD
contains the name of the currently checked-out branch.
The index file is initialized with a list of all paths and, for each path, a blob object and a set of attributes. The blob object represents the contents of the file as of the head of the current branch. The attributes (last modified time, size, etc.) are taken from the corresponding file in the working tree. Subsequent changes to the working tree can be found by comparing these attributes. The index may be updated with new content, and new commits may be created from the content stored in the index.
The index is also capable of storing multiple entries (called "stages") for a given pathname. These stages are used to hold the various unmerged version of a file when a merge is in progress.
See the references in the "description" section to get started using Git. The following is probably more detail than necessary for a first-time user.
The Git concepts chapter of the user-manual and gitcore-tutorial[7] both provide introductions to the underlying Git architecture.
See gitworkflows[7] for an overview of recommended workflows.
See also the howto documents for some useful examples.
The internals are documented in the Git API documentation.
Users migrating from CVS may also want to read gitcvs-migration[7].
Git was started by Linus Torvalds, and is currently maintained by Junio C Hamano. Numerous contributions have come from the Git mailing list <[email protected]>. http://www.openhub.net/p/git/contributors/summary gives you a more complete list of contributors.
If you have a clone of git.git itself, the output of git-shortlog[1] and git-blame[1] can show you the authors for specific parts of the project.
Report bugs to the Git mailing list <[email protected]> where the development and maintenance is primarily done. You do not have to be subscribed to the list to send a message there.
gittutorial[7], gittutorial-2[7], giteveryday[7], gitcvs-migration[7], gitglossary[7], gitcore-tutorial[7], gitcli[7], The Git User’s Manual, gitworkflows[7]
© 2005–2017 Linus Torvalds and others
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.
https://git-scm.com/docs/git.html