1GITCLI(7) Git Manual GITCLI(7)
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6 gitcli - Git command-line interface and conventions
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9 gitcli
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12 This manual describes the convention used throughout Git CLI.
13 Many commands take revisions (most often "commits", but sometimes
15 "tree-ish", depending on the context and command) and paths as their
16 arguments. Here are the rules:
17 · Revisions come first and then paths. E.g. in git diff v1.0 v2.0
19 arch/x86 include/asm-x86, v1.0 and v2.0 are revisions and arch/x86
20 and include/asm-x86 are paths.
21 · When an argument can be misunderstood as either a revision or a
23 path, they can be disambiguated by placing -- between them. E.g.
24 git diff -- HEAD is, "I have a file called HEAD in my work tree.
25 Please show changes between the version I staged in the index and
26 what I have in the work tree for that file", not "show difference
27 between the HEAD commit and the work tree as a whole". You can say
28 git diff HEAD -- to ask for the latter.
29 · Without disambiguating --, Git makes a reasonable guess, but errors
31 out and asking you to disambiguate when ambiguous. E.g. if you have
32 a file called HEAD in your work tree, git diff HEAD is ambiguous,
33 and you have to say either git diff HEAD -- or git diff -- HEAD to
34 disambiguate.
35 When writing a script that is expected to handle random user-input,
37 it is a good practice to make it explicit which arguments are which
38 by placing disambiguating -- at appropriate places.
39 · Many commands allow wildcards in paths, but you need to protect
41 them from getting globbed by the shell. These two mean different
42 things:
43 $ git checkout -- *.c
45 $ git checkout -- \*.c
46 The former lets your shell expand the fileglob, and you are asking
48 the dot-C files in your working tree to be overwritten with the
49 version in the index. The latter passes the *.c to Git, and you are
50 asking the paths in the index that match the pattern to be checked
51 out to your working tree. After running git add hello.c; rm
52 hello.c, you will not see hello.c in your working tree with the
53 former, but with the latter you will.
54 · Just as the filesystem . (period) refers to the current directory,
56 using a . as a repository name in Git (a dot-repository) is a
57 relative path and means your current repository.
58 Here are the rules regarding the "flags" that you should follow when
60 you are scripting Git:
61 · it’s preferred to use the non-dashed form of Git commands, which
63 means that you should prefer git foo to git-foo.
64 · splitting short options to separate words (prefer git foo -a -b to
66 git foo -ab, the latter may not even work).
67 · when a command-line option takes an argument, use the stuck form.
69 In other words, write git foo -oArg instead of git foo -o Arg for
70 short options, and git foo --long-opt=Arg instead of git foo
71 --long-opt Arg for long options. An option that takes optional
72 option-argument must be written in the stuck form.
73 · when you give a revision parameter to a command, make sure the
75 parameter is not ambiguous with a name of a file in the work tree.
76 E.g. do not write git log -1 HEAD but write git log -1 HEAD --; the
77 former will not work if you happen to have a file called HEAD in
78 the work tree.
79 · many commands allow a long option --option to be abbreviated only
81 to their unique prefix (e.g. if there is no other option whose name
82 begins with opt, you may be able to spell --opt to invoke the
83 --option flag), but you should fully spell them out when writing
84 your scripts; later versions of Git may introduce a new option
85 whose name shares the same prefix, e.g. --optimize, to make a
86 short prefix that used to be unique no longer unique.
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89 From the Git 1.5.4 series and further, many Git commands (not all of
90 them at the time of the writing though) come with an enhanced option
91 parser.
92 Here is a list of the facilities provided by this option parser.
94 Magic Options
96 Commands which have the enhanced option parser activated all understand
97 a couple of magic command-line options:
98 -h
100 gives a pretty printed usage of the command.
101 $ git describe -h
103 usage: git describe [<options>] <commit-ish>*
104 or: git describe [<options>] --dirty
105 --contains find the tag that comes after the commit
107 --debug debug search strategy on stderr
108 --all use any ref
109 --tags use any tag, even unannotated
110 --long always use long format
111 --abbrev[=<n>] use <n> digits to display SHA-1s
112 --help-all
115 Some Git commands take options that are only used for plumbing or
116 that are deprecated, and such options are hidden from the default
117 usage. This option gives the full list of options.
118 Negating options
120 Options with long option names can be negated by prefixing --no-. For
121 example, git branch has the option --track which is on by default. You
122 can use --no-track to override that behaviour. The same goes for
123 --color and --no-color.
124 Aggregating short options
126 Commands that support the enhanced option parser allow you to aggregate
127 short options. This means that you can for example use git rm -rf or
128 git clean -fdx.
129 Abbreviating long options
131 Commands that support the enhanced option parser accepts unique prefix
132 of a long option as if it is fully spelled out, but use this with a
133 caution. For example, git commit --amen behaves as if you typed git
134 commit --amend, but that is true only until a later version of Git
135 introduces another option that shares the same prefix, e.g. git commit
136 --amenity option.
137 Separating argument from the option
139 You can write the mandatory option parameter to an option as a separate
140 word on the command line. That means that all the following uses work:
141 $ git foo --long-opt=Arg
143 $ git foo --long-opt Arg
144 $ git foo -oArg
145 $ git foo -o Arg
146 However, this is NOT allowed for switches with an optional value, where
149 the stuck form must be used:
150 $ git describe --abbrev HEAD # correct
152 $ git describe --abbrev=10 HEAD # correct
153 $ git describe --abbrev 10 HEAD # NOT WHAT YOU MEANT
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157 Many commands that can work on files in the working tree and/or in the
158 index can take --cached and/or --index options. Sometimes people
159 incorrectly think that, because the index was originally called cache,
160 these two are synonyms. They are not — these two options mean very
161 different things.
162 · The --cached option is used to ask a command that usually works on
164 files in the working tree to only work with the index. For example,
165 git grep, when used without a commit to specify from which commit
166 to look for strings in, usually works on files in the working tree,
167 but with the --cached option, it looks for strings in the index.
168 · The --index option is used to ask a command that usually works on
170 files in the working tree to also affect the index. For example,
171 git stash apply usually merges changes recorded in a stash entry to
172 the working tree, but with the --index option, it also merges
173 changes to the index as well.
174 git apply command can be used with --cached and --index (but not at the
176 same time). Usually the command only affects the files in the working
177 tree, but with --index, it patches both the files and their index
178 entries, and with --cached, it modifies only the index entries.
179 See also http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116563135620359 and
181 http://marc.info/?l=git&m=119150393620273 for further information.
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184 Part of the git(1) suite
185Git 2.20.1 12/15/2018 GITCLI(7)