1GITCLI(7)                         Git Manual                         GITCLI(7)
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NAME

6       gitcli - Git command-line interface and conventions
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SYNOPSIS

9       gitcli
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DESCRIPTION

12       This manual describes the convention used throughout Git CLI.
13
14       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
18       ·   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
22       ·   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
30       ·   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
36       ·   Because -- disambiguates revisions and paths in some commands, it
37           cannot be used for those commands to separate options and
38           revisions. You can use --end-of-options for this (it also works for
39           commands that do not distinguish between revisions in paths, in
40           which case it is simply an alias for --).
41
42           When writing a script that is expected to handle random user-input,
43           it is a good practice to make it explicit which arguments are which
44           by placing disambiguating -- at appropriate places.
45
46       ·   Many commands allow wildcards in paths, but you need to protect
47           them from getting globbed by the shell. These two mean different
48           things:
49
50               $ git restore *.c
51               $ git restore \*.c
52
53           The former lets your shell expand the fileglob, and you are asking
54           the dot-C files in your working tree to be overwritten with the
55           version in the index. The latter passes the *.c to Git, and you are
56           asking the paths in the index that match the pattern to be checked
57           out to your working tree. After running git add hello.c; rm
58           hello.c, you will not see hello.c in your working tree with the
59           former, but with the latter you will.
60
61       ·   Just as the filesystem .  (period) refers to the current directory,
62           using a .  as a repository name in Git (a dot-repository) is a
63           relative path and means your current repository.
64
65       Here are the rules regarding the "flags" that you should follow when
66       you are scripting Git:
67
68       ·   it’s preferred to use the non-dashed form of Git commands, which
69           means that you should prefer git foo to git-foo.
70
71       ·   splitting short options to separate words (prefer git foo -a -b to
72           git foo -ab, the latter may not even work).
73
74       ·   when a command-line option takes an argument, use the stuck form.
75           In other words, write git foo -oArg instead of git foo -o Arg for
76           short options, and git foo --long-opt=Arg instead of git foo
77           --long-opt Arg for long options. An option that takes optional
78           option-argument must be written in the stuck form.
79
80       ·   when you give a revision parameter to a command, make sure the
81           parameter is not ambiguous with a name of a file in the work tree.
82           E.g. do not write git log -1 HEAD but write git log -1 HEAD --; the
83           former will not work if you happen to have a file called HEAD in
84           the work tree.
85
86       ·   many commands allow a long option --option to be abbreviated only
87           to their unique prefix (e.g. if there is no other option whose name
88           begins with opt, you may be able to spell --opt to invoke the
89           --option flag), but you should fully spell them out when writing
90           your scripts; later versions of Git may introduce a new option
91           whose name shares the same prefix, e.g.  --optimize, to make a
92           short prefix that used to be unique no longer unique.
93

ENHANCED OPTION PARSER

95       From the Git 1.5.4 series and further, many Git commands (not all of
96       them at the time of the writing though) come with an enhanced option
97       parser.
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99       Here is a list of the facilities provided by this option parser.
100
101   Magic Options
102       Commands which have the enhanced option parser activated all understand
103       a couple of magic command-line options:
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105       -h
106           gives a pretty printed usage of the command.
107
108               $ git describe -h
109               usage: git describe [<options>] <commit-ish>*
110                  or: git describe [<options>] --dirty
111
112                   --contains            find the tag that comes after the commit
113                   --debug               debug search strategy on stderr
114                   --all                 use any ref
115                   --tags                use any tag, even unannotated
116                   --long                always use long format
117                   --abbrev[=<n>]        use <n> digits to display SHA-1s
118
119           Note that some subcommand (e.g.  git grep) may behave differently
120           when there are things on the command line other than -h, but git
121           subcmd -h without anything else on the command line is meant to
122           consistently give the usage.
123
124       --help-all
125           Some Git commands take options that are only used for plumbing or
126           that are deprecated, and such options are hidden from the default
127           usage. This option gives the full list of options.
128
129   Negating options
130       Options with long option names can be negated by prefixing --no-. For
131       example, git branch has the option --track which is on by default. You
132       can use --no-track to override that behaviour. The same goes for
133       --color and --no-color.
134
135   Aggregating short options
136       Commands that support the enhanced option parser allow you to aggregate
137       short options. This means that you can for example use git rm -rf or
138       git clean -fdx.
139
140   Abbreviating long options
141       Commands that support the enhanced option parser accepts unique prefix
142       of a long option as if it is fully spelled out, but use this with a
143       caution. For example, git commit --amen behaves as if you typed git
144       commit --amend, but that is true only until a later version of Git
145       introduces another option that shares the same prefix, e.g. git commit
146       --amenity option.
147
148   Separating argument from the option
149       You can write the mandatory option parameter to an option as a separate
150       word on the command line. That means that all the following uses work:
151
152           $ git foo --long-opt=Arg
153           $ git foo --long-opt Arg
154           $ git foo -oArg
155           $ git foo -o Arg
156
157       However, this is NOT allowed for switches with an optional value, where
158       the stuck form must be used:
159
160           $ git describe --abbrev HEAD     # correct
161           $ git describe --abbrev=10 HEAD  # correct
162           $ git describe --abbrev 10 HEAD  # NOT WHAT YOU MEANT
163

NOTES ON FREQUENTLY CONFUSED OPTIONS

165       Many commands that can work on files in the working tree and/or in the
166       index can take --cached and/or --index options. Sometimes people
167       incorrectly think that, because the index was originally called cache,
168       these two are synonyms. They are not — these two options mean very
169       different things.
170
171       ·   The --cached option is used to ask a command that usually works on
172           files in the working tree to only work with the index. For example,
173           git grep, when used without a commit to specify from which commit
174           to look for strings in, usually works on files in the working tree,
175           but with the --cached option, it looks for strings in the index.
176
177       ·   The --index option is used to ask a command that usually works on
178           files in the working tree to also affect the index. For example,
179           git stash apply usually merges changes recorded in a stash entry to
180           the working tree, but with the --index option, it also merges
181           changes to the index as well.
182
183       git apply command can be used with --cached and --index (but not at the
184       same time). Usually the command only affects the files in the working
185       tree, but with --index, it patches both the files and their index
186       entries, and with --cached, it modifies only the index entries.
187
188       See also
189       https://lore.kernel.org/git/7v64clg5u9.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net/
190       and
191       https://lore.kernel.org/git/7vy7ej9g38.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org/
192       for further information.
193
194       Some other commands that also work on files in the working tree and/or
195       in the index can take --staged and/or --worktree.
196
197       ·   --staged is exactly like --cached, which is used to ask a command
198           to only work on the index, not the working tree.
199
200       ·   --worktree is the opposite, to ask a command to work on the working
201           tree only, not the index.
202
203       ·   The two options can be specified together to ask a command to work
204           on both the index and the working tree.
205

GIT

207       Part of the git(1) suite
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211Git 2.30.2                        2021-03-08                         GITCLI(7)
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