Git tips and tricks

Gotchas from the course:

Course notes: https://cemac.github.io/sc-git/

  • On windows git bash is preferable to use over git CMD as git bash gives you access to useful bash commands

  • checkout changes: make sure to stash changes if you’re unsure of reverting them

  • Undoing a staging git rm --cached <file>

  • storing credentials if you don’t want to use ssh: git config credential.helper 'cache --timeout=300'

Extra Tips

  1. git diff You can use verbose time references, quite handy for checking what you’ve changed since say wednesday

 git diff HEAD@{yesterday},
 git diff HEAD@{'2 months ago'}
 git diff HEAD@{'2010-01-01 12:00:00'}

  1. pretty terminal git tree

git log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative

  1. Adding to commits Just committed something and noticed a typo and dont want a whole new commit for that typo?

git add --all; git commit --amend

  1. Safer git force push

git push --force-with-lease

Large Files on git hub

If you must have a file larger than 100MB on github then it is possible via git lfs. E.g. a single data file that is not being regularly edited.

  1. install git lfs

  2. follow these steps

# initialise git lfs in repo
cd repo
git lfs install
# tell lfs which large files need tracking
git lfs track "*.mat"
# make sure the .gitattributes file is added
git add .gitattributes
git add .
git commit -am 'adding large files'
# push the commit via git lfs
git lfs push --all origin main
# update github
git push -u origin main