de-alphabetizing the documentation

I am trying to learn how to use Git but I've been put off by not knowing where to start. I would like to start with the 'git' man page, but it lists the Git subcommands in alphabetical order, rather than in an order which would be useful for learners. For example, I'm not sure how often 'git bisect' is used, but it is strange to see it listed before 'git init' and 'git clone'.

I wonder if someone familiar with Git could list the commands in an order which makes more sense for learning, for example in the order in which they were invented by Git developers,

or in the reverse order of
frequency of use by a typical Git user.

Finally, perhaps the same listing and/or reordering could be done for other important manual pages, like 'gitglossary'. Presumably 'gitglossary' should be sorted topologically, so that each term is defined prior to any terms depending on it.

Ideas? If you start with a proposal, we're happy to help refine it. People in the #git channel on irc.freenode.net (wechat.freenode.net) might also be useful for inspiration in coming up with a proposal.

Quoted 3 lines · Frederick Eaton

I wonder if someone familiar with Git could list the commands in an order which makes more sense for learning, for example in the order in which they were invented by Git developers,

Alas, there are plenty of "Main porcelain commands", and I think that is where your question comes from. It would be nicer to list just five to start, say.

Quoted 3 lines · Jonathan Nieder

Ideas? If you start with a proposal, we're happy to help refine it. People in the #git channel on irc.freenode.net (wechat.freenode.net) might also be useful for inspiration in coming up with a proposal.

I meant to link to webchat.freenode.net. But
https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/ may have been a better link to use anyway.

Thanks and sorry for the noise,
Jonathan

Quoted 8 lines · Jonathan Nieder

Quoted 3 lines · Frederick Eaton

I wonder if someone familiar with Git could list the commands in an order which makes more sense for learning, for example in the order in which they were invented by Git developers,

Alas, there are plenty of "Main porcelain commands", and I think that is where your question comes from. It would be nicer to list just five to start, say.

"git help" makes some attempt at narrowing the list of porcelain commands likely to be used on an everyday basis (and it categorizes the list by general activity). Of the 21 commands listed, I use 14-16 in pretty much every development session, so "git help" might be a good starting place for someone trying to figure out which commands to study, or for someone wishing to help focus the documentation a bit more for beginners.

--- >8 ---

$ git help
usage: git ...

These are common Git commands used in various situations:

start a working area (see also: git help tutorial)
clone Clone a repository into a new directory
init Create an empty Git repository or reinitialize an existing one

work on the current change (see also: git help everyday)

   add        Add file contents to the index
   mv         Move or rename a file, a directory, or a symlink
   reset      Reset current HEAD to the specified state
   rm         Remove files from the working tree and from the index

examine the history and state (see also: git help revisions)

   bisect     Use binary search to find the commit that introduced a bug
   grep       Print lines matching a pattern
   log        Show commit logs
   show       Show various types of objects
   status     Show the working tree status

grow, mark and tweak your common history

   branch     List, create, or delete branches
   checkout   Switch branches or restore working tree files
   commit     Record changes to the repository
   diff       Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc
   merge      Join two or more development histories together
   rebase     Reapply commits on top of another base tip
   tag        Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed with GPG

collaborate (see also: git help workflows)

   fetch      Download objects and refs from another repository
   pull       Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch
   push       Update remote refs along with associated objects

'git help -a' and 'git help -g' list available subcommands and some concept guides. See 'git help <command>' or 'git help <concept>' to read about a specific subcommand or concept.
--- >8 ---

Unfortunately my contribution will have to be limited for the
moment to making this suggestion, as I am extraordinarily busy. I hope it will not be too burdensome to add this item to your TODO list and keep it there until a willing volunteer comes along.

For what it's worth, I made extensive changes to the Arch Wiki Git article back in 2015, following an initial attempt of mine to understand various tutorials. It was the most prominent wiki-based Git documentation I could find at the time. The article has of course seen numerous improvements since then.

I don't think that it's really important to find a "best" ordering for commands or glossary terms; it's more a matter of finding someone who is willing to take responsibility for choosing a reasonable ordering. Presumably the head maintainer of this project could delegate the task to a qualified volunteer, not a newbie like myself but not necessarily someone with expert knowledge either.

It's too bad that a policy of
not listing things alphabetically wasn't adopted from the beginning of this project, but I guess that's life.

Thanks Eric for the pointer to "git help". This does indeed provide a finer and better grouping than the man-page (but it also looks like another candidate for de-alphabetization...!).

Hi,

Quoted 4 lines · Frederick Eaton

Unfortunately my contribution will have to be limited for the
moment to making this suggestion, as I am extraordinarily busy. I hope it will not be too burdensome to add this item to your TODO list and keep it there until a willing volunteer comes along.

No problem. If you have time to contribute later, we can wait. :)

Quoted 5 lines

For what it's worth, I made extensive changes to the Arch Wiki Git article back in 2015, following an initial attempt of mine to understand various tutorials. It was the most prominent wiki-based Git documentation I could find at the time. The article has of course seen numerous improvements since then.

For reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/git

Quoted 6 lines

I don't think that it's really important to find a "best" ordering for commands or glossary terms; it's more a matter of finding someone who is willing to take responsibility for choosing a reasonable ordering. Presumably the head maintainer of this project could delegate the task to a qualified volunteer, not a newbie like myself but not necessarily someone with expert knowledge either.

I'd have to say, when I compare the troubles a new user and a long-timer would run into, I conclude that the long-timers would be more likely to produce worse documentation. It is very difficult to remember how new users see things. The ideal skill set in fact has nothing to do with level of Git expertise: to produce a good result, a good technical writer would ask the right questions to gather information from the experts and then test their documentation on newcomers until it works well.

Based on the work you've described already having done, it sounds like you'd be an ideal person to get this going, if you find yourself with time for it.

Quoted 3 lines

It's too bad that a policy of
not listing things alphabetically wasn't adopted from the beginning of this project, but I guess that's life.

From this thread I've been convinced that for this kind of reference document, alphabetical organization within each section is a good organization, provided each section is small enough (as in "git help" output).

I'm also a fan of non reference documentation that can use a narrative ordering instead (like "git help core-tutorial", except with more modern commands).

Quoted 3 lines

Thanks Eric for the pointer to "git help". This does indeed provide a finer and better grouping than the man-page (but it also looks like another candidate for de-alphabetization...!).

Indeed, copying that organization over from "git help" to the git(1) manpage may be a good step for any interested people overhearing this conversation.

As a first step, how about making git(1) recommend "git help", like this? It already recommends giteveryday(7) but the more interactive first command might be useful for some people.

Thoughts? Improvements?

-- >8 --
Subject: git doc: recommend "git help" as a starting point

The list of subcommands described in git(1) can be overwhelming. Encourage newcomers to run "git help" to get a shorter list of commands as a starting point.

Based on a suggestion by Frederick Eaton.

Signed-off-by Jonathan Nieder <[email protected]>

---
 Documentation/git.txt | 9 ++++++---
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

Documentation/git.txt +6 -3

index dba7f0c18e..0149ce9af0 100644
@@ -23,9 +23,12 @@ unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations
 and full access to internals.
 
 See linkgit:gittutorial[7] to get started, then see
-linkgit:giteveryday[7] for a useful minimum set of
-commands.  The link:user-manual.html[Git User's Manual] has a more
-in-depth introduction.
+linkgit:giteveryday[7] and run
+
+    git help
+
+for a useful minimum set of commands.  The link:user-manual.html[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

Signature · 1 line

2.18.0.203.gfac676dfb9

Hi Jonathan,

If it's really just a matter of needing someone with a newcomer's perspective, then I'd be happy to look over the ordering of the git subcommands. You can run the command I provided to glean the frequency of each subcommand from your shell history, I'll look over the output and see if the ordering makes sense to me, and then you or someone else can rearrange the manual page to list the subcommands in this order. Is that a suitable plan?

Thanks,

Frederick

Quoted 103 lines · Jonathan Nieder

Hi,

Quoted 4 lines · Frederick Eaton

Unfortunately my contribution will have to be limited for the
moment to making this suggestion, as I am extraordinarily busy. I hope it will not be too burdensome to add this item to your TODO list and keep it there until a willing volunteer comes along.

No problem. If you have time to contribute later, we can wait. :)

Quoted 5 lines

For what it's worth, I made extensive changes to the Arch Wiki Git article back in 2015, following an initial attempt of mine to understand various tutorials. It was the most prominent wiki-based Git documentation I could find at the time. The article has of course seen numerous improvements since then.

For reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/git

Quoted 6 lines

I don't think that it's really important to find a "best" ordering for commands or glossary terms; it's more a matter of finding someone who is willing to take responsibility for choosing a reasonable ordering. Presumably the head maintainer of this project could delegate the task to a qualified volunteer, not a newbie like myself but not necessarily someone with expert knowledge either.

I'd have to say, when I compare the troubles a new user and a long-timer would run into, I conclude that the long-timers would be more likely to produce worse documentation. It is very difficult to remember how new users see things. The ideal skill set in fact has nothing to do with level of Git expertise: to produce a good result, a good technical writer would ask the right questions to gather information from the experts and then test their documentation on newcomers until it works well.

Based on the work you've described already having done, it sounds like you'd be an ideal person to get this going, if you find yourself with time for it.

Quoted 3 lines

It's too bad that a policy of
not listing things alphabetically wasn't adopted from the beginning of this project, but I guess that's life.

From this thread I've been convinced that for this kind of reference document, alphabetical organization within each section is a good organization, provided each section is small enough (as in "git help" output).

I'm also a fan of non reference documentation that can use a narrative ordering instead (like "git help core-tutorial", except with more modern commands).

Quoted 3 lines

Thanks Eric for the pointer to "git help". This does indeed provide a finer and better grouping than the man-page (but it also looks like another candidate for de-alphabetization...!).

Indeed, copying that organization over from "git help" to the git(1) manpage may be a good step for any interested people overhearing this conversation.

As a first step, how about making git(1) recommend "git help", like this? It already recommends giteveryday(7) but the more interactive first command might be useful for some people.

Thoughts? Improvements?

-- >8 --
Subject: git doc: recommend "git help" as a starting point

The list of subcommands described in git(1) can be overwhelming. Encourage newcomers to run "git help" to get a shorter list of commands as a starting point.

Based on a suggestion by Frederick Eaton.

Signed-off-by Jonathan Nieder <[email protected]>

---
 Documentation/git.txt | 9 ++++++---
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

Documentation/git.txt +6 -3

index dba7f0c18e..0149ce9af0 100644
@@ -23,9 +23,12 @@ unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations
 and full access to internals.
 
 See linkgit:gittutorial[7] to get started, then see
-linkgit:giteveryday[7] for a useful minimum set of
-commands.  The link:user-manual.html[Git User's Manual] has a more
-in-depth introduction.
+linkgit:giteveryday[7] and run
+
+    git help
+
+for a useful minimum set of commands.  The link:user-manual.html[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

Signature · 1 line

2.18.0.203.gfac676dfb9

Next week I should have time to send you a patch with the manual page reordered...

although, unless you have a special 'diff' which can
detect when text has been moved from one place to another, I'm guessing it would take you even longer to check the validity of the patch than it would for me to create it.

However, I'm happy to do this or whatever other small projects you would like to delegate as far as improving readability of your documentation. I just need to know what is likely to be accepted.

Hi,

Quoted 2 lines · [email protected] wrote:

Next week I should have time to send you a patch with the manual page reordered...

Yay!

Quoted 4 lines

although, unless you have a special 'diff' which can
detect when text has been moved from one place to another, I'm guessing it would take you even longer to check the validity of the patch than it would for me to create it.

Fortunately we have "git diff --color-moved".

Quoted 3 lines

However, I'm happy to do this or whatever other small projects you would like to delegate as far as improving readability of your documentation. I just need to know what is likely to be accepted.

Starting with this one seems fine. Maybe people on list will have ideas for followups on top, or maybe you'll have ideas for ways others can help you, or both. ;-)

Thanks again,
Jonathan

Hi Jonathan and Git developers,

I poked around today and figured out how to reorder the command listings in the manual page, they are taken from git/command-list.txt so I just reorder the lines in that file (after disabling sorting in git/Documentation/cmd-list.perl).

I haven't reordered the whole list yet. I could only get one computer friend to send me his subcommand frequencies from his shell history. I reordered the commands partly based on that, and partly based on their order of occurrence in the various tutorial man pages.

This is a follow-up to my proposal to de-alphabetize the command listings in the git(1) manual page, from 6 July 2018.

Some projects have manual page items listed in alphabetical order, some don't. As I argued in my proposal, I find it easier to learn from material which is not alphabetized. If this patch is accepted, I hope that it will make the Git documentation more accessible to myself and others.

I produced the reordered command list in this patch using several sources, as indicated by comments in the new command-list.txt file. First, all the commands in the main part of "gittutorial(7)" appear in order, then the commands in giteveryday(7). Then appear additional commands from a friend's shell history, in reverse order of frequency. Then gittutorial-2(7), then gitcore-tutorial(7). After that there is a list of "guides", followed by about 100 commands not appearing in the earlier lists. I kept the guides and the remaining commands in their category groupings (guide, mainporcelain, ancillarymanipulators, etc.), but ordered the commands within each category according to my own judgment after skimming each manual page.

To verify that the new list is a permutation of the most recent list, I use the following command (it should produce no output and exit 0):

diff <(git show master:command-list.txt | grep -v '^#' | sort ) <(cat command-list.txt | grep -v '^#' | sort)

Note this patch changes the order of commands appearing in the generated file "command-list.h", which mostly seems to be used by "help.c". Probably due to the various occurrences of QSORT in "help.c", I think this reordering has no visible effect. I am willing to do any additional testing which may be recommended to ensure that this patch has no undesired consequences.

Frederick Eaton (1):
Prioritize list of commands appearing in git(1), via command-list.txt.
Don't invoke 'sort' in Documentation/cmd-list.perl.

Documentation/cmd-list.perl | 2 +-
command-list.txt | 295 +++++++++++++++++++-----------------

2 files changed, 158 insertions(+), 139 deletions(-)

Signature · 1 line

2.20.1

I realized that it would probably be easier to discuss this proposal if I attached the final command listing and the rendered manual page. Please find them attached to this message.

Thank you,

Frederick

Quoted 33 lines · Frederick Eaton

This is a follow-up to my proposal to de-alphabetize the command listings in the git(1) manual page, from 6 July 2018.

Some projects have manual page items listed in alphabetical order, some don't. As I argued in my proposal, I find it easier to learn from material which is not alphabetized. If this patch is accepted, I hope that it will make the Git documentation more accessible to myself and others.

I produced the reordered command list in this patch using several sources, as indicated by comments in the new command-list.txt file. First, all the commands in the main part of "gittutorial(7)" appear in order, then the commands in giteveryday(7). Then appear additional commands from a friend's shell history, in reverse order of frequency. Then gittutorial-2(7), then gitcore-tutorial(7). After that there is a list of "guides", followed by about 100 commands not appearing in the earlier lists. I kept the guides and the remaining commands in their category groupings (guide, mainporcelain, ancillarymanipulators, etc.), but ordered the commands within each category according to my own judgment after skimming each manual page.

To verify that the new list is a permutation of the most recent list, I use the following command (it should produce no output and exit 0):

diff <(git show master:command-list.txt | grep -v '^#' | sort ) <(cat command-list.txt | grep -v '^#' | sort)

Note this patch changes the order of commands appearing in the generated file "command-list.h", which mostly seems to be used by "help.c". Probably due to the various occurrences of QSORT in "help.c", I think this reordering has no visible effect. I am willing to do any additional testing which may be recommended to ensure that this patch has no undesired consequences.

Quoted 11 lines

Frederick Eaton (1):
Prioritize list of commands appearing in git(1), via command-list.txt.
Don't invoke 'sort' in Documentation/cmd-list.perl.

Documentation/cmd-list.perl | 2 +-
command-list.txt | 295 +++++++++++++++++++-----------------

2 files changed, 158 insertions(+), 139 deletions(-)

Signature · 1 line

2.20.1

# Command classification list
# ---------------------------
# All supported commands, builtin or external, must be described in

# here. This info is used to list commands in various places. Each
# command is on one line followed by one or more attributes.
#
# The first attribute group is mandatory and indicates the command
# type. This group includes:
#
#   mainporcelain
#   ancillarymanipulators
#   ancillaryinterrogators
#   foreignscminterface
#   plumbingmanipulators
#   plumbinginterrogators
#   synchingrepositories
#   synchelpers
#   purehelpers
#
# The type names are self explanatory. But if you want to see what
# command belongs to what group to get a better picture, have a look
# at "git" man page, "GIT COMMANDS" section.
#
# Commands of type mainporcelain can also optionally have one of these
# attributes:
#
#   init
#   worktree
#   info
#   history
#   remote
#
# These commands are considered "common" and will show up in "git
# help" output in groups. Uncommon porcelain commands must not
# specify any of these attributes.
#
# "complete" attribute is used to mark that the command should be
# completable by git-completion.bash. Note that by default,
# mainporcelain commands are completable so you don't need this
# attribute.
#
# As part of the Git man page list, the man(5/7) guides are also
# specified here, which can only have "guide" attribute and nothing
# else.
#
# February 2019: This list had been sorted alphabetically but has been
# reordered to make it easier for people to learn from the main git(1)
# manual page. The new ordering is according to approximate usefulness
# / frequency of use / order of use, with some grouping by topic. The
# idea is to make it possible to read the manual page from beginning
# to end and see the most important commands first, rather than
# getting them in alphabetical order - in other words, to make the
# manual page more like a table of contents and less like an index.
# Please consider this when adding new commands.
#
### command list (do not change this line, also do not change alignment)
# command name                          category [category] [category]
# From gittutorial
git-help                                ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-config                              ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-clone                               mainporcelain           init
git-init                                mainporcelain           init
git-add                                 mainporcelain           worktree
git-commit                              mainporcelain           history
git-diff                                mainporcelain           history
git-status                              mainporcelain           info
git-log                                 mainporcelain           info
git-branch                              mainporcelain           history
git-checkout                            mainporcelain           history
git-merge                               mainporcelain           history
gitk                                    mainporcelain
git-pull                                mainporcelain           remote
git-fetch                               mainporcelain           remote
# From tutorial NEXT STEPS
git-format-patch                        mainporcelain
git-bisect                              mainporcelain           info
giteveryday                             guide
gitworkflows                            guide
gitcvs-migration                        guide
# From giteveryday
git-reset                               mainporcelain           worktree
git-rebase                              mainporcelain           history
git-tag                                 mainporcelain           history
git-push                                mainporcelain           remote
git-send-email                          foreignscminterface             complete
git-request-pull                        foreignscminterface             complete
git-am                                  mainporcelain
git-revert                              mainporcelain
git-daemon                              synchingrepositories
git-shell                               synchelpers
git-http-backend                        synchingrepositories
gitweb                                  ancillaryinterrogators
# From user feedback
git-grep                                mainporcelain           info
git-show                                mainporcelain           info
git-submodule                           mainporcelain
git-cherry-pick                         mainporcelain
git-clean                               mainporcelain
# From gittutorial-2
git-cat-file                            plumbinginterrogators
git-ls-tree                             plumbinginterrogators
git-ls-files                            plumbinginterrogators
gitcore-tutorial                        guide
gitglossary                             guide
# From gitcore-tutorial
git-update-index                        plumbingmanipulators
git-diff-files                          plumbinginterrogators
git-write-tree                          plumbingmanipulators
git-read-tree                           plumbingmanipulators
git-checkout-index                      plumbingmanipulators
git-show-branch                         ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-name-rev                            plumbinginterrogators
git-merge-index                         plumbingmanipulators
git-repack                              ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-prune-packed                        plumbingmanipulators
git-update-server-info                  synchingrepositories
git-prune                               ancillarymanipulators
git-cherry                              plumbinginterrogators          complete
# Guides, reordered
gittutorial                             guide
gittutorial-2                           guide
gitrevisions                            guide
gitignore                               guide
gitcli                                  guide
gitrepository-layout                    guide
gitdiffcore                             guide
gitmodules                              guide
githooks                                guide
gitnamespaces                           guide
gitattributes                           guide
# All other commands, sorted by man page category and then by
# approximate priority
git-stash                               mainporcelain
git-rm                                  mainporcelain           worktree
git-mv                                  mainporcelain           worktree
git-gui                                 mainporcelain
git-citool                              mainporcelain
git-archive                             mainporcelain
git-shortlog                            mainporcelain
git-describe                            mainporcelain
git-gc                                  mainporcelain
git-notes                               mainporcelain
git-worktree                            mainporcelain
git-bundle                              mainporcelain
git-range-diff                          mainporcelain
git-stage                                                               complete
git-reflog                              ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-remote                              ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-mergetool                           ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-filter-branch                       ancillarymanipulators
git-replace                             ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-fast-export                         ancillarymanipulators
git-fast-import                         ancillarymanipulators
git-pack-refs                           ancillarymanipulators
git-cvsimport                           foreignscminterface
git-cvsserver                           foreignscminterface
git-cvsexportcommit                     foreignscminterface
git-svn                                 foreignscminterface
git-p4                                  foreignscminterface
git-quiltimport                         foreignscminterface
git-archimport                          foreignscminterface
git-imap-send                           foreignscminterface
git-apply                               plumbingmanipulators            complete
git-merge-file                          plumbingmanipulators
git-mktag                               plumbingmanipulators
git-hash-object                         plumbingmanipulators
git-update-ref                          plumbingmanipulators
git-symbolic-ref                        plumbingmanipulators
git-commit-tree                         plumbingmanipulators
git-commit-graph                        plumbingmanipulators
git-mktree                              plumbingmanipulators
git-pack-objects                        plumbingmanipulators
git-unpack-objects                      plumbingmanipulators
git-index-pack                          plumbingmanipulators
git-multi-pack-index                    plumbingmanipulators
git-blame                               ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-annotate                            ancillaryinterrogators
git-instaweb                            ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-rerere                              ancillaryinterrogators
git-fsck                                ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-whatchanged                         ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-difftool                            ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-merge-tree                          ancillaryinterrogators
git-count-objects                       ancillaryinterrogators
git-verify-commit                       ancillaryinterrogators
git-verify-tag                          ancillaryinterrogators
git-send-pack                           synchingrepositories
git-fetch-pack                          synchingrepositories
git-parse-remote                        synchelpers
git-receive-pack                        synchelpers
git-upload-pack                         synchelpers
git-upload-archive                      synchelpers
git-http-fetch                          synchelpers
git-http-push                           synchelpers
git-var                                 plumbinginterrogators
git-rev-list                            plumbinginterrogators
git-rev-parse                           plumbinginterrogators
git-for-each-ref                        plumbinginterrogators
git-show-ref                            plumbinginterrogators
git-ls-remote                           plumbinginterrogators
git-diff-tree                           plumbinginterrogators
git-diff-index                          plumbinginterrogators
git-merge-base                          plumbinginterrogators
git-verify-pack                         plumbinginterrogators
git-pack-redundant                      plumbinginterrogators
git-unpack-file                         plumbinginterrogators
git-show-index                          plumbinginterrogators
git-get-tar-commit-id                   plumbinginterrogators
git-merge-one-file                      purehelpers
git-sh-setup                            purehelpers
git-check-ref-format                    purehelpers
git-check-ignore                        purehelpers
git-check-attr                          purehelpers
git-credential                          purehelpers
git-credential-cache                    purehelpers
git-credential-store                    purehelpers
git-fmt-merge-msg                       purehelpers
git-check-mailmap                       purehelpers
git-mailsplit                           purehelpers
git-mailinfo                            purehelpers
git-interpret-trailers                  purehelpers
git-column                              purehelpers
git-stripspace                          purehelpers
git-patch-id                            purehelpers
git-sh-i18n                             purehelpers

GIT(1) Git Manual GIT(1)

NAME
git - the stupid content tracker

SYNOPSIS

      git [--version] [--help] [-C <path>] [-c <name>=<value>]
          [--exec-path[=<path>]] [--html-path] [--man-path] [--info-path]
          [-p|--paginate|-P|--no-pager] [--no-replace-objects] [--bare]
          [--git-dir=<path>] [--work-tree=<path>] [--namespace=<name>]
          [--super-prefix=<path>]
          <command> [<args>]

DESCRIPTION
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[1] 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.

OPTIONS
--version
Prints the Git suite version that the git program came from.

--help
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 ....

-C <path>
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

-c <name>=<value>
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 --type=bool will convert to false.

--exec-path[=<path>]
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.

--html-path
Print the path, without trailing slash, where Git's HTML documentation is installed and exit.

--man-path
Print the manpath (see man(1)) for the man pages for this version of Git and exit.

--info-path
Print the path where the Info files documenting this version of Git are installed and exit.

-p, --paginate
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).

-P, --no-pager
Do not pipe Git output into a pager.

--git-dir=<path>
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.

--work-tree=<path>
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).

--namespace=<path>
Set the Git namespace. See gitnamespaces(7) for more details. Equivalent to setting the GIT_NAMESPACE environment variable.

--super-prefix=<path>
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.

--bare
Treat the repository as a bare repository. If GIT_DIR environment is not set, it is set to the current working directory.

--no-replace-objects
Do not use replacement refs to replace Git objects. See git- replace(1) for more information.

--literal-pathspecs
Treat pathspecs literally (i.e. no globbing, no pathspec magic). This is equivalent to setting the GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS environment variable to 1.

--glob-pathspecs
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)"

--noglob-pathspecs
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)"

--icase-pathspecs
Add "icase" magic to all pathspec. This is equivalent to setting the GIT_ICASE_PATHSPECS environment variable to 1.

--no-optional-locks
Do not perform optional operations that require locks. This is equivalent to setting the GIT_OPTIONAL_LOCKS to 0.

--list-cmds=group[,group...]
List commands by group. This is an internal/experimental option and may change or be removed in the future. Supported groups are:
builtins, parseopt (builtin commands that use parse-options), main (all commands in libexec directory), others (all other commands in $PATH that have git- prefix), list-<category> (see categories in command-list.txt), nohelpers (exclude helper commands), alias and config (retrieve command list from config variable completion.commands)

GIT COMMANDS
We divide Git into high level ("porcelain") commands and low level ("plumbing") commands.

HIGH-LEVEL COMMANDS (PORCELAIN)
We separate the porcelain commands into the main commands and some ancillary user utilities.

Main porcelain commands
git-clone(1)
Clone a repository into a new directory.

git-init(1)
Create an empty Git repository or reinitialize an existing one.

git-add(1)
Add file contents to the index.

git-commit(1)
Record changes to the repository.

git-diff(1)
Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc.

git-status(1)
Show the working tree status.

git-log(1)
Show commit logs.

git-branch(1)
List, create, or delete branches.

git-checkout(1)
Switch branches or restore working tree files.

git-merge(1)
Join two or more development histories together.

gitk(1)
The Git repository browser.

git-pull(1)
Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch.

git-fetch(1)
Download objects and refs from another repository.

git-format-patch(1)
Prepare patches for e-mail submission.

git-bisect(1)
Use binary search to find the commit that introduced a bug.

git-reset(1)
Reset current HEAD to the specified state.

git-rebase(1)
Reapply commits on top of another base tip.

git-tag(1)
Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed with GPG.

git-push(1)
Update remote refs along with associated objects.

git-am(1)
Apply a series of patches from a mailbox.

git-revert(1)
Revert some existing commits.

git-grep(1)
Print lines matching a pattern.

git-show(1)
Show various types of objects.

git-submodule(1)
Initialize, update or inspect submodules.

git-cherry-pick(1)
Apply the changes introduced by some existing commits.

git-clean(1)
Remove untracked files from the working tree.

git-stash(1)
Stash the changes in a dirty working directory away.

git-rm(1)
Remove files from the working tree and from the index.

git-mv(1)
Move or rename a file, a directory, or a symlink.

git-gui(1)
A portable graphical interface to Git.

git-citool(1)
Graphical alternative to git-commit.

git-archive(1)
Create an archive of files from a named tree.

git-shortlog(1)
Summarize git log output.

git-describe(1)
Give an object a human readable name based on an available ref.

git-gc(1)
Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository.

git-notes(1)
Add or inspect object notes.

git-worktree(1)
Manage multiple working trees.

git-bundle(1)
Move objects and refs by archive.

git-range-diff(1)
Compare two commit ranges (e.g. two versions of a branch).

Ancillary Commands
Manipulators:

git-config(1)
Get and set repository or global options.

git-repack(1)
Pack unpacked objects in a repository.

git-prune(1)
Prune all unreachable objects from the object database.

git-reflog(1)
Manage reflog information.

git-remote(1)
Manage set of tracked repositories.

git-mergetool(1)
Run merge conflict resolution tools to resolve merge conflicts.

git-filter-branch(1)
Rewrite branches.

git-replace(1)
Create, list, delete refs to replace objects.

git-fast-export(1)
Git data exporter.

git-fast-import(1)
Backend for fast Git data importers.

git-pack-refs(1)
Pack heads and tags for efficient repository access.

Interrogators:

git-help(1)
Display help information about Git.

gitweb(1)
Git web interface (web frontend to Git repositories).

git-show-branch(1)
Show branches and their commits.

git-blame(1)
Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file.

git-annotate(1)
Annotate file lines with commit information.

git-instaweb(1)
Instantly browse your working repository in gitweb.

git-rerere(1)
Reuse recorded resolution of conflicted merges.

git-fsck(1)
Verifies the connectivity and validity of the objects in the database.

git-whatchanged(1)
Show logs with difference each commit introduces.

git-difftool(1)
Show changes using common diff tools.

git-merge-tree(1)
Show three-way merge without touching index.

git-count-objects(1)
Count unpacked number of objects and their disk consumption.

git-verify-commit(1)
Check the GPG signature of commits.

git-verify-tag(1)
Check the GPG signature of tags.

Interacting with Others
These commands are to interact with foreign SCM and with other people via patch over e-mail.

git-send-email(1)
Send a collection of patches as emails.

git-request-pull(1)
Generates a summary of pending changes.

git-cvsimport(1)
Salvage your data out of another SCM people love to hate.

git-cvsserver(1)
A CVS server emulator for Git.

git-cvsexportcommit(1)
Export a single commit to a CVS checkout.

git-svn(1)
Bidirectional operation between a Subversion repository and Git.

git-p4(1)
Import from and submit to Perforce repositories.

git-quiltimport(1)
Applies a quilt patchset onto the current branch.

git-archimport(1)
Import a GNU Arch repository into Git.

git-imap-send(1)
Send a collection of patches from stdin to an IMAP folder.

LOW-LEVEL COMMANDS (PLUMBING)
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.

Manipulation commands
git-update-index(1)
Register file contents in the working tree to the index.

git-write-tree(1)
Create a tree object from the current index.

git-read-tree(1)
Reads tree information into the index.

git-checkout-index(1)
Copy files from the index to the working tree.

git-merge-index(1)
Run a merge for files needing merging.

git-prune-packed(1)
Remove extra objects that are already in pack files.

git-apply(1)
Apply a patch to files and/or to the index.

git-merge-file(1)
Run a three-way file merge.

git-mktag(1)
Creates a tag object.

git-hash-object(1)
Compute object ID and optionally creates a blob from a file.

git-update-ref(1)
Update the object name stored in a ref safely.

git-symbolic-ref(1)
Read, modify and delete symbolic refs.

git-commit-tree(1)
Create a new commit object.

git-commit-graph(1)
Write and verify Git commit-graph files.

git-mktree(1)
Build a tree-object from ls-tree formatted text.

git-pack-objects(1)
Create a packed archive of objects.

git-unpack-objects(1)
Unpack objects from a packed archive.

git-index-pack(1)
Build pack index file for an existing packed archive.

git-multi-pack-index(1)
Write and verify multi-pack-indexes.

Interrogation commands
git-cat-file(1)
Provide content or type and size information for repository objects.

git-ls-tree(1)
List the contents of a tree object.

git-ls-files(1)
Show information about files in the index and the working tree.

git-diff-files(1)
Compares files in the working tree and the index.

git-name-rev(1)
Find symbolic names for given revs.

git-cherry(1)
Find commits yet to be applied to upstream.

git-var(1)
Show a Git logical variable.

git-rev-list(1)
Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order.

git-rev-parse(1)
Pick out and massage parameters.

git-for-each-ref(1)
Output information on each ref.

git-show-ref(1)
List references in a local repository.

git-ls-remote(1)
List references in a remote repository.

git-diff-tree(1)
Compares the content and mode of blobs found via two tree objects.

git-diff-index(1)
Compare a tree to the working tree or index.

git-merge-base(1)
Find as good common ancestors as possible for a merge.

git-verify-pack(1)
Validate packed Git archive files.

git-pack-redundant(1)
Find redundant pack files.

git-unpack-file(1)
Creates a temporary file with a blob's contents.

git-show-index(1)
Show packed archive index.

git-get-tar-commit-id(1)
Extract commit ID from an archive created using git-archive.

In general, the interrogate commands do not touch the files in the working tree.

Synching repositories
git-daemon(1)
A really simple server for Git repositories.

git-http-backend(1)
Server side implementation of Git over HTTP.

git-update-server-info(1)
Update auxiliary info file to help dumb servers.

git-send-pack(1)
Push objects over Git protocol to another repository.

git-fetch-pack(1)
Receive missing objects from another repository.

The following are helper commands used by the above; end users typically do not use them directly.

git-shell(1)
Restricted login shell for Git-only SSH access.

git-parse-remote(1)
Routines to help parsing remote repository access parameters.

git-receive-pack(1)
Receive what is pushed into the repository.

git-upload-pack(1)
Send objects packed back to git-fetch-pack.

git-upload-archive(1)
Send archive back to git-archive.

git-http-fetch(1)
Download from a remote Git repository via HTTP.

git-http-push(1)
Push objects over HTTP/DAV to another repository.

Internal helper commands
These are internal helper commands used by other commands; end users typically do not use them directly.

git-merge-one-file(1)
The standard helper program to use with git-merge-index.

git-sh-setup(1)
Common Git shell script setup code.

git-check-ref-format(1)
Ensures that a reference name is well formed.

git-check-ignore(1)
Debug gitignore / exclude files.

git-check-attr(1)
Display gitattributes information.

git-credential(1)
Retrieve and store user credentials.

git-credential-cache(1)
Helper to temporarily store passwords in memory.

git-credential-store(1)
Helper to store credentials on disk.

git-fmt-merge-msg(1)
Produce a merge commit message.

git-check-mailmap(1)
Show canonical names and email addresses of contacts.

git-mailsplit(1)
Simple UNIX mbox splitter program.

git-mailinfo(1)
Extracts patch and authorship from a single e-mail message.

git-interpret-trailers(1)
add or parse structured information in commit messages.

git-column(1)
Display data in columns.

git-stripspace(1)
Remove unnecessary whitespace.

git-patch-id(1)
Compute unique ID for a patch.

git-sh-i18n(1)
Git's i18n setup code for shell scripts.

CONFIGURATION MECHANISM
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.

IDENTIFIER TERMINOLOGY
<object>
Indicates the object name for any type of object.

<blob>
Indicates a blob object name.

<tree>
Indicates a tree object name.

<commit>
Indicates a commit object name.

<tree-ish>
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>.

<commit-ish>
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>.

<type>
Indicates that an object type is required. Currently one of: blob, tree, commit, or tag.

<file>
Indicates a filename - almost always relative to the root of the tree structure GIT_INDEX_FILE describes.

SYMBOLIC IDENTIFIERS
Any Git command accepting any <object> can also use the following symbolic notation:

HEAD
indicates the head of the current branch.

<tag>
a valid tag name (i.e. a refs/tags/<tag> reference).

<head>
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).

FILE/DIRECTORY STRUCTURE
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.

TERMINOLOGY
Please see gitglossary(7).

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Various Git commands use the following environment variables:

The Git Repository
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 Commits
GIT_AUTHOR_NAME, GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL, GIT_AUTHOR_DATE, GIT_COMMITTER_NAME, GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL, GIT_COMMITTER_DATE, EMAIL
see git-commit-tree(1)

Git Diffs
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:

<old|new>-file
are files GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF can use to read the contents of <old|new>,

<old|new>-hex
are the 40-hexdigit SHA-1 hashes,

<old|new>-mode
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.

other
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-line parameters passed to the configured command are determined by the ssh variant. See ssh.variant option in git-config(1) for details.

+ $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 append the trace messages to it.

Unsetting the variable, or setting it to empty, "0" or "false" (case insensitive) disables trace messages.

GIT_TRACE_FSMONITOR
Enables trace messages for the filesystem monitor extension. See GIT_TRACE for available trace output options.

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_TRACE_CURL_NO_DATA
When a curl trace is enabled (see GIT_TRACE_CURL above), do not dump data (that is, only dump info lines and headers).

GIT_REDACT_COOKIES
This can be set to a comma-separated list of strings. When a curl trace is enabled (see GIT_TRACE_CURL above), whenever a "Cookies:" header sent by the client is dumped, values of cookies whose key is in that list (case-sensitive) are redacted.

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_PROTOCOL
For internal use only. Used in handshaking the wire protocol. Contains a colon : separated list of keys with optional values key[=value]. Presence of unknown keys and values must be ignored.

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.

GIT_PRINT_SHA1_ELLIPSIS (deprecated)
If set to yes, print an ellipsis following an (abbreviated) SHA-1 value. This affects indications of detached HEADs (git-checkout(1)) and the raw diff output (git-diff(1)). Printing an ellipsis in the cases mentioned is no longer considered adequate and support for it is likely to be removed in the foreseeable future (along with the variable).

DISCUSSION
More detail on the following is available from the Git concepts chapter of the user-manual[2] 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.

FURTHER DOCUMENTATION
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[2] 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[3] documents for some useful examples.

The internals are documented in the Git API documentation[4].

Users migrating from CVS may also want to read gitcvs-migration(7).

AUTHORS
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][5]>.
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.

REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to the Git mailing list <[email protected][5]> where the development and maintenance is primarily done. You do not have to be subscribed to the list to send a message there. See the list archive at
https://public-inbox.org/git for previous bug reports and other discussions.

Issues which are security relevant should be disclosed privately to the Git Security mailing list <[email protected][6]>.

SEE ALSO

      gittutorial(7), gittutorial-2(7), giteveryday(7), gitcvs-migration(7),
      gitglossary(7), gitcore-tutorial(7), gitcli(7), The Git User's
      Manual[1], gitworkflows(7)

GIT
Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES
1. Git User's Manual file:///home/frederik/share/doc/git-doc/user-manual.html

2. Git concepts chapter of the user-manual file:///home/frederik/share/doc/git-doc/user-manual.html#git-concepts

3. howto file:///home/frederik/share/doc/git-doc/howto-index.html

4. Git API documentation file:///home/frederik/share/doc/git-doc/technical/api-index.html

5. [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]

6. [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]

Git 2.21.0.rc1.9.g3f 02/18/2019 GIT(1)

Hey Git people,

I didn't get a reply and I'm not sure what the appropriate ping interval is, or when I should conclude that no one is interested.

There seemed to be some vaguely positive feedback before I embarked on this project. At the same time I don't want to pester anyone into applying patches in a disorganized fashion.

I'm not subscribed to the mailing list so I apologize if I'm out of tune with a release cycle or current development thrust.

Thanks,

Frederick

Quoted 1,481 lines

I realized that it would probably be easier to discuss this proposal if I attached the final command listing and the rendered manual page. Please find them attached to this message.

Thank you,

Frederick

Quoted 37 lines · Frederick Eaton

This is a follow-up to my proposal to de-alphabetize the command listings in the git(1) manual page, from 6 July 2018.

Some projects have manual page items listed in alphabetical order, some don't. As I argued in my proposal, I find it easier to learn from material which is not alphabetized. If this patch is accepted, I hope that it will make the Git documentation more accessible to myself and others.

I produced the reordered command list in this patch using several sources, as indicated by comments in the new command-list.txt file. First, all the commands in the main part of "gittutorial(7)" appear in order, then the commands in giteveryday(7). Then appear additional commands from a friend's shell history, in reverse order of frequency. Then gittutorial-2(7), then gitcore-tutorial(7). After that there is a list of "guides", followed by about 100 commands not appearing in the earlier lists. I kept the guides and the remaining commands in their category groupings (guide, mainporcelain, ancillarymanipulators, etc.), but ordered the commands within each category according to my own judgment after skimming each manual page.

To verify that the new list is a permutation of the most recent list, I use the following command (it should produce no output and exit 0):

diff <(git show master:command-list.txt | grep -v '^#' | sort ) <(cat command-list.txt | grep -v '^#' | sort)

Note this patch changes the order of commands appearing in the generated file "command-list.h", which mostly seems to be used by "help.c". Probably due to the various occurrences of QSORT in "help.c", I think this reordering has no visible effect. I am willing to do any additional testing which may be recommended to ensure that this patch has no undesired consequences.

Frederick Eaton (1):
Prioritize list of commands appearing in git(1), via command-list.txt.
Don't invoke 'sort' in Documentation/cmd-list.perl.

Quoted 7 lines

Documentation/cmd-list.perl | 2 +-
command-list.txt | 295 +++++++++++++++++++-----------------

2 files changed, 158 insertions(+), 139 deletions(-)

--
2.20.1

# Command classification list
# ---------------------------
# All supported commands, builtin or external, must be described in

# here. This info is used to list commands in various places. Each
# command is on one line followed by one or more attributes.
#
# The first attribute group is mandatory and indicates the command
# type. This group includes:
#
#   mainporcelain
#   ancillarymanipulators
#   ancillaryinterrogators
#   foreignscminterface
#   plumbingmanipulators
#   plumbinginterrogators
#   synchingrepositories
#   synchelpers
#   purehelpers
#
# The type names are self explanatory. But if you want to see what
# command belongs to what group to get a better picture, have a look
# at "git" man page, "GIT COMMANDS" section.
#
# Commands of type mainporcelain can also optionally have one of these
# attributes:
#
#   init
#   worktree
#   info
#   history
#   remote
#
# These commands are considered "common" and will show up in "git
# help" output in groups. Uncommon porcelain commands must not
# specify any of these attributes.
#
# "complete" attribute is used to mark that the command should be
# completable by git-completion.bash. Note that by default,
# mainporcelain commands are completable so you don't need this
# attribute.
#
# As part of the Git man page list, the man(5/7) guides are also
# specified here, which can only have "guide" attribute and nothing
# else.
#
# February 2019: This list had been sorted alphabetically but has been
# reordered to make it easier for people to learn from the main git(1)
# manual page. The new ordering is according to approximate usefulness
# / frequency of use / order of use, with some grouping by topic. The
# idea is to make it possible to read the manual page from beginning
# to end and see the most important commands first, rather than
# getting them in alphabetical order - in other words, to make the
# manual page more like a table of contents and less like an index.
# Please consider this when adding new commands.
#
### command list (do not change this line, also do not change alignment)
# command name                          category [category] [category]
# From gittutorial
git-help                                ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-config                              ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-clone                               mainporcelain           init
git-init                                mainporcelain           init
git-add                                 mainporcelain           worktree
git-commit                              mainporcelain           history
git-diff                                mainporcelain           history
git-status                              mainporcelain           info
git-log                                 mainporcelain           info
git-branch                              mainporcelain           history
git-checkout                            mainporcelain           history
git-merge                               mainporcelain           history
gitk                                    mainporcelain
git-pull                                mainporcelain           remote
git-fetch                               mainporcelain           remote
# From tutorial NEXT STEPS
git-format-patch                        mainporcelain
git-bisect                              mainporcelain           info
giteveryday                             guide
gitworkflows                            guide
gitcvs-migration                        guide
# From giteveryday
git-reset                               mainporcelain           worktree
git-rebase                              mainporcelain           history
git-tag                                 mainporcelain           history
git-push                                mainporcelain           remote
git-send-email                          foreignscminterface             complete
git-request-pull                        foreignscminterface             complete
git-am                                  mainporcelain
git-revert                              mainporcelain
git-daemon                              synchingrepositories
git-shell                               synchelpers
git-http-backend                        synchingrepositories
gitweb                                  ancillaryinterrogators
# From user feedback
git-grep                                mainporcelain           info
git-show                                mainporcelain           info
git-submodule                           mainporcelain
git-cherry-pick                         mainporcelain
git-clean                               mainporcelain
# From gittutorial-2
git-cat-file                            plumbinginterrogators
git-ls-tree                             plumbinginterrogators
git-ls-files                            plumbinginterrogators
gitcore-tutorial                        guide
gitglossary                             guide
# From gitcore-tutorial
git-update-index                        plumbingmanipulators
git-diff-files                          plumbinginterrogators
git-write-tree                          plumbingmanipulators
git-read-tree                           plumbingmanipulators
git-checkout-index                      plumbingmanipulators
git-show-branch                         ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-name-rev                            plumbinginterrogators
git-merge-index                         plumbingmanipulators
git-repack                              ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-prune-packed                        plumbingmanipulators
git-update-server-info                  synchingrepositories
git-prune                               ancillarymanipulators
git-cherry                              plumbinginterrogators          complete
# Guides, reordered
gittutorial                             guide
gittutorial-2                           guide
gitrevisions                            guide
gitignore                               guide
gitcli                                  guide
gitrepository-layout                    guide
gitdiffcore                             guide
gitmodules                              guide
githooks                                guide
gitnamespaces                           guide
gitattributes                           guide
# All other commands, sorted by man page category and then by
# approximate priority
git-stash                               mainporcelain
git-rm                                  mainporcelain           worktree
git-mv                                  mainporcelain           worktree
git-gui                                 mainporcelain
git-citool                              mainporcelain
git-archive                             mainporcelain
git-shortlog                            mainporcelain
git-describe                            mainporcelain
git-gc                                  mainporcelain
git-notes                               mainporcelain
git-worktree                            mainporcelain
git-bundle                              mainporcelain
git-range-diff                          mainporcelain
git-stage                                                               complete
git-reflog                              ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-remote                              ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-mergetool                           ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-filter-branch                       ancillarymanipulators
git-replace                             ancillarymanipulators           complete
git-fast-export                         ancillarymanipulators
git-fast-import                         ancillarymanipulators
git-pack-refs                           ancillarymanipulators
git-cvsimport                           foreignscminterface
git-cvsserver                           foreignscminterface
git-cvsexportcommit                     foreignscminterface
git-svn                                 foreignscminterface
git-p4                                  foreignscminterface
git-quiltimport                         foreignscminterface
git-archimport                          foreignscminterface
git-imap-send                           foreignscminterface
git-apply                               plumbingmanipulators            complete
git-merge-file                          plumbingmanipulators
git-mktag                               plumbingmanipulators
git-hash-object                         plumbingmanipulators
git-update-ref                          plumbingmanipulators
git-symbolic-ref                        plumbingmanipulators
git-commit-tree                         plumbingmanipulators
git-commit-graph                        plumbingmanipulators
git-mktree                              plumbingmanipulators
git-pack-objects                        plumbingmanipulators
git-unpack-objects                      plumbingmanipulators
git-index-pack                          plumbingmanipulators
git-multi-pack-index                    plumbingmanipulators
git-blame                               ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-annotate                            ancillaryinterrogators
git-instaweb                            ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-rerere                              ancillaryinterrogators
git-fsck                                ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-whatchanged                         ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-difftool                            ancillaryinterrogators          complete
git-merge-tree                          ancillaryinterrogators
git-count-objects                       ancillaryinterrogators
git-verify-commit                       ancillaryinterrogators
git-verify-tag                          ancillaryinterrogators
git-send-pack                           synchingrepositories
git-fetch-pack                          synchingrepositories
git-parse-remote                        synchelpers
git-receive-pack                        synchelpers
git-upload-pack                         synchelpers
git-upload-archive                      synchelpers
git-http-fetch                          synchelpers
git-http-push                           synchelpers
git-var                                 plumbinginterrogators
git-rev-list                            plumbinginterrogators
git-rev-parse                           plumbinginterrogators
git-for-each-ref                        plumbinginterrogators
git-show-ref                            plumbinginterrogators
git-ls-remote                           plumbinginterrogators
git-diff-tree                           plumbinginterrogators
git-diff-index                          plumbinginterrogators
git-merge-base                          plumbinginterrogators
git-verify-pack                         plumbinginterrogators
git-pack-redundant                      plumbinginterrogators
git-unpack-file                         plumbinginterrogators
git-show-index                          plumbinginterrogators
git-get-tar-commit-id                   plumbinginterrogators
git-merge-one-file                      purehelpers
git-sh-setup                            purehelpers
git-check-ref-format                    purehelpers
git-check-ignore                        purehelpers
git-check-attr                          purehelpers
git-credential                          purehelpers
git-credential-cache                    purehelpers
git-credential-store                    purehelpers
git-fmt-merge-msg                       purehelpers
git-check-mailmap                       purehelpers
git-mailsplit                           purehelpers
git-mailinfo                            purehelpers
git-interpret-trailers                  purehelpers
git-column                              purehelpers
git-stripspace                          purehelpers
git-patch-id                            purehelpers
git-sh-i18n                             purehelpers

GIT(1) Git Manual GIT(1)

NAME
git - the stupid content tracker

SYNOPSIS

      git [--version] [--help] [-C <path>] [-c <name>=<value>]
          [--exec-path[=<path>]] [--html-path] [--man-path] [--info-path]
          [-p|--paginate|-P|--no-pager] [--no-replace-objects] [--bare]
          [--git-dir=<path>] [--work-tree=<path>] [--namespace=<name>]
          [--super-prefix=<path>]
          <command> [<args>]

DESCRIPTION
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[1] 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.

OPTIONS
--version
Prints the Git suite version that the git program came from.

--help
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 ....

-C <path>
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

-c <name>=<value>
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 --type=bool will convert to false.

--exec-path[=<path>]
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.

--html-path
Print the path, without trailing slash, where Git's HTML documentation is installed and exit.

--man-path
Print the manpath (see man(1)) for the man pages for this version of Git and exit.

--info-path
Print the path where the Info files documenting this version of Git are installed and exit.

-p, --paginate
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).

-P, --no-pager
Do not pipe Git output into a pager.

--git-dir=<path>
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.

--work-tree=<path>
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).

--namespace=<path>
Set the Git namespace. See gitnamespaces(7) for more details. Equivalent to setting the GIT_NAMESPACE environment variable.

--super-prefix=<path>
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.

--bare
Treat the repository as a bare repository. If GIT_DIR environment is not set, it is set to the current working directory.

--no-replace-objects
Do not use replacement refs to replace Git objects. See git- replace(1) for more information.

--literal-pathspecs
Treat pathspecs literally (i.e. no globbing, no pathspec magic). This is equivalent to setting the GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS environment variable to 1.

--glob-pathspecs
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)"

--noglob-pathspecs
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)"

--icase-pathspecs
Add "icase" magic to all pathspec. This is equivalent to setting the GIT_ICASE_PATHSPECS environment variable to 1.

--no-optional-locks
Do not perform optional operations that require locks. This is equivalent to setting the GIT_OPTIONAL_LOCKS to 0.

--list-cmds=group[,group...]
List commands by group. This is an internal/experimental option and may change or be removed in the future. Supported groups are:
builtins, parseopt (builtin commands that use parse-options), main (all commands in libexec directory), others (all other commands in $PATH that have git- prefix), list-<category> (see categories in command-list.txt), nohelpers (exclude helper commands), alias and config (retrieve command list from config variable completion.commands)

GIT COMMANDS
We divide Git into high level ("porcelain") commands and low level ("plumbing") commands.

HIGH-LEVEL COMMANDS (PORCELAIN)
We separate the porcelain commands into the main commands and some ancillary user utilities.

Main porcelain commands
git-clone(1)
Clone a repository into a new directory.

git-init(1)
Create an empty Git repository or reinitialize an existing one.

git-add(1)
Add file contents to the index.

git-commit(1)
Record changes to the repository.

git-diff(1)
Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc.

git-status(1)
Show the working tree status.

git-log(1)
Show commit logs.

git-branch(1)
List, create, or delete branches.

git-checkout(1)
Switch branches or restore working tree files.

git-merge(1)
Join two or more development histories together.

gitk(1)
The Git repository browser.

git-pull(1)
Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch.

git-fetch(1)
Download objects and refs from another repository.

git-format-patch(1)
Prepare patches for e-mail submission.

git-bisect(1)
Use binary search to find the commit that introduced a bug.

git-reset(1)
Reset current HEAD to the specified state.

git-rebase(1)
Reapply commits on top of another base tip.

git-tag(1)
Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed with GPG.

git-push(1)
Update remote refs along with associated objects.

git-am(1)
Apply a series of patches from a mailbox.

git-revert(1)
Revert some existing commits.

git-grep(1)
Print lines matching a pattern.

git-show(1)
Show various types of objects.

git-submodule(1)
Initialize, update or inspect submodules.

git-cherry-pick(1)
Apply the changes introduced by some existing commits.

git-clean(1)
Remove untracked files from the working tree.

git-stash(1)
Stash the changes in a dirty working directory away.

git-rm(1)
Remove files from the working tree and from the index.

git-mv(1)
Move or rename a file, a directory, or a symlink.

git-gui(1)
A portable graphical interface to Git.

git-citool(1)
Graphical alternative to git-commit.

git-archive(1)
Create an archive of files from a named tree.

git-shortlog(1)
Summarize git log output.

git-describe(1)
Give an object a human readable name based on an available ref.

git-gc(1)
Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository.

git-notes(1)
Add or inspect object notes.

git-worktree(1)
Manage multiple working trees.

git-bundle(1)
Move objects and refs by archive.

git-range-diff(1)
Compare two commit ranges (e.g. two versions of a branch).

Ancillary Commands
Manipulators:

git-config(1)
Get and set repository or global options.

git-repack(1)
Pack unpacked objects in a repository.

git-prune(1)
Prune all unreachable objects from the object database.

git-reflog(1)
Manage reflog information.

git-remote(1)
Manage set of tracked repositories.

git-mergetool(1)
Run merge conflict resolution tools to resolve merge conflicts.

git-filter-branch(1)
Rewrite branches.

git-replace(1)
Create, list, delete refs to replace objects.

git-fast-export(1)
Git data exporter.

git-fast-import(1)
Backend for fast Git data importers.

git-pack-refs(1)
Pack heads and tags for efficient repository access.

Interrogators:

git-help(1)
Display help information about Git.

gitweb(1)
Git web interface (web frontend to Git repositories).

git-show-branch(1)
Show branches and their commits.

git-blame(1)
Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file.

git-annotate(1)
Annotate file lines with commit information.

git-instaweb(1)
Instantly browse your working repository in gitweb.

git-rerere(1)
Reuse recorded resolution of conflicted merges.

git-fsck(1)
Verifies the connectivity and validity of the objects in the database.

git-whatchanged(1)
Show logs with difference each commit introduces.

git-difftool(1)
Show changes using common diff tools.

git-merge-tree(1)
Show three-way merge without touching index.

git-count-objects(1)
Count unpacked number of objects and their disk consumption.

git-verify-commit(1)
Check the GPG signature of commits.

git-verify-tag(1)
Check the GPG signature of tags.

Interacting with Others
These commands are to interact with foreign SCM and with other people via patch over e-mail.

git-send-email(1)
Send a collection of patches as emails.

git-request-pull(1)
Generates a summary of pending changes.

git-cvsimport(1)
Salvage your data out of another SCM people love to hate.

git-cvsserver(1)
A CVS server emulator for Git.

git-cvsexportcommit(1)
Export a single commit to a CVS checkout.

git-svn(1)
Bidirectional operation between a Subversion repository and Git.

git-p4(1)
Import from and submit to Perforce repositories.

git-quiltimport(1)
Applies a quilt patchset onto the current branch.

git-archimport(1)
Import a GNU Arch repository into Git.

git-imap-send(1)
Send a collection of patches from stdin to an IMAP folder.

LOW-LEVEL COMMANDS (PLUMBING)
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.

Manipulation commands
git-update-index(1)
Register file contents in the working tree to the index.

git-write-tree(1)
Create a tree object from the current index.

git-read-tree(1)
Reads tree information into the index.

git-checkout-index(1)
Copy files from the index to the working tree.

git-merge-index(1)
Run a merge for files needing merging.

git-prune-packed(1)
Remove extra objects that are already in pack files.

git-apply(1)
Apply a patch to files and/or to the index.

git-merge-file(1)
Run a three-way file merge.

git-mktag(1)
Creates a tag object.

git-hash-object(1)
Compute object ID and optionally creates a blob from a file.

git-update-ref(1)
Update the object name stored in a ref safely.

git-symbolic-ref(1)
Read, modify and delete symbolic refs.

git-commit-tree(1)
Create a new commit object.

git-commit-graph(1)
Write and verify Git commit-graph files.

git-mktree(1)
Build a tree-object from ls-tree formatted text.

git-pack-objects(1)
Create a packed archive of objects.

git-unpack-objects(1)
Unpack objects from a packed archive.

git-index-pack(1)
Build pack index file for an existing packed archive.

git-multi-pack-index(1)
Write and verify multi-pack-indexes.

Interrogation commands
git-cat-file(1)
Provide content or type and size information for repository objects.

git-ls-tree(1)
List the contents of a tree object.

git-ls-files(1)
Show information about files in the index and the working tree.

git-diff-files(1)
Compares files in the working tree and the index.

git-name-rev(1)
Find symbolic names for given revs.

git-cherry(1)
Find commits yet to be applied to upstream.

git-var(1)
Show a Git logical variable.

git-rev-list(1)
Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order.

git-rev-parse(1)
Pick out and massage parameters.

git-for-each-ref(1)
Output information on each ref.

git-show-ref(1)
List references in a local repository.

git-ls-remote(1)
List references in a remote repository.

git-diff-tree(1)
Compares the content and mode of blobs found via two tree objects.

git-diff-index(1)
Compare a tree to the working tree or index.

git-merge-base(1)
Find as good common ancestors as possible for a merge.

git-verify-pack(1)
Validate packed Git archive files.

git-pack-redundant(1)
Find redundant pack files.

git-unpack-file(1)
Creates a temporary file with a blob's contents.

git-show-index(1)
Show packed archive index.

git-get-tar-commit-id(1)
Extract commit ID from an archive created using git-archive.

In general, the interrogate commands do not touch the files in the working tree.

Synching repositories
git-daemon(1)
A really simple server for Git repositories.

git-http-backend(1)
Server side implementation of Git over HTTP.

git-update-server-info(1)
Update auxiliary info file to help dumb servers.

git-send-pack(1)
Push objects over Git protocol to another repository.

git-fetch-pack(1)
Receive missing objects from another repository.

The following are helper commands used by the above; end users typically do not use them directly.

git-shell(1)
Restricted login shell for Git-only SSH access.

git-parse-remote(1)
Routines to help parsing remote repository access parameters.

git-receive-pack(1)
Receive what is pushed into the repository.

git-upload-pack(1)
Send objects packed back to git-fetch-pack.

git-upload-archive(1)
Send archive back to git-archive.

git-http-fetch(1)
Download from a remote Git repository via HTTP.

git-http-push(1)
Push objects over HTTP/DAV to another repository.

Internal helper commands
These are internal helper commands used by other commands; end users typically do not use them directly.

git-merge-one-file(1)
The standard helper program to use with git-merge-index.

git-sh-setup(1)
Common Git shell script setup code.

git-check-ref-format(1)
Ensures that a reference name is well formed.

git-check-ignore(1)
Debug gitignore / exclude files.

git-check-attr(1)
Display gitattributes information.

git-credential(1)
Retrieve and store user credentials.

git-credential-cache(1)
Helper to temporarily store passwords in memory.

git-credential-store(1)
Helper to store credentials on disk.

git-fmt-merge-msg(1)
Produce a merge commit message.

git-check-mailmap(1)
Show canonical names and email addresses of contacts.

git-mailsplit(1)
Simple UNIX mbox splitter program.

git-mailinfo(1)
Extracts patch and authorship from a single e-mail message.

git-interpret-trailers(1)
add or parse structured information in commit messages.

git-column(1)
Display data in columns.

git-stripspace(1)
Remove unnecessary whitespace.

git-patch-id(1)
Compute unique ID for a patch.

git-sh-i18n(1)
Git's i18n setup code for shell scripts.

CONFIGURATION MECHANISM
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.

IDENTIFIER TERMINOLOGY
<object>
Indicates the object name for any type of object.

<blob>
Indicates a blob object name.

<tree>
Indicates a tree object name.

<commit>
Indicates a commit object name.

<tree-ish>
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>.

<commit-ish>
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>.

<type>
Indicates that an object type is required. Currently one of: blob, tree, commit, or tag.

<file>
Indicates a filename - almost always relative to the root of the tree structure GIT_INDEX_FILE describes.

SYMBOLIC IDENTIFIERS
Any Git command accepting any <object> can also use the following symbolic notation:

HEAD
indicates the head of the current branch.

<tag>
a valid tag name (i.e. a refs/tags/<tag> reference).

<head>
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).

FILE/DIRECTORY STRUCTURE
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.

TERMINOLOGY
Please see gitglossary(7).

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Various Git commands use the following environment variables:

The Git Repository
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 Commits
GIT_AUTHOR_NAME, GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL, GIT_AUTHOR_DATE, GIT_COMMITTER_NAME, GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL, GIT_COMMITTER_DATE, EMAIL
see git-commit-tree(1)

Git Diffs
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:

<old|new>-file
are files GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF can use to read the contents of <old|new>,

<old|new>-hex
are the 40-hexdigit SHA-1 hashes,

<old|new>-mode
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.

other
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-line parameters passed to the configured command are determined by the ssh variant. See ssh.variant option in git-config(1) for details.

+ $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 append the trace messages to it.

Unsetting the variable, or setting it to empty, "0" or "false" (case insensitive) disables trace messages.

GIT_TRACE_FSMONITOR
Enables trace messages for the filesystem monitor extension. See GIT_TRACE for available trace output options.

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_TRACE_CURL_NO_DATA
When a curl trace is enabled (see GIT_TRACE_CURL above), do not dump data (that is, only dump info lines and headers).

GIT_REDACT_COOKIES
This can be set to a comma-separated list of strings. When a curl trace is enabled (see GIT_TRACE_CURL above), whenever a "Cookies:" header sent by the client is dumped, values of cookies whose key is in that list (case-sensitive) are redacted.

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_PROTOCOL
For internal use only. Used in handshaking the wire protocol. Contains a colon : separated list of keys with optional values key[=value]. Presence of unknown keys and values must be ignored.

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.

GIT_PRINT_SHA1_ELLIPSIS (deprecated)
If set to yes, print an ellipsis following an (abbreviated) SHA-1 value. This affects indications of detached HEADs (git-checkout(1)) and the raw diff output (git-diff(1)). Printing an ellipsis in the cases mentioned is no longer considered adequate and support for it is likely to be removed in the foreseeable future (along with the variable).

DISCUSSION
More detail on the following is available from the Git concepts chapter of the user-manual[2] 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.

FURTHER DOCUMENTATION
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[2] 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[3] documents for some useful examples.

The internals are documented in the Git API documentation[4].

Users migrating from CVS may also want to read gitcvs-migration(7).

AUTHORS
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][5]>.
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.

REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to the Git mailing list <[email protected][5]> where the development and maintenance is primarily done. You do not have to be subscribed to the list to send a message there. See the list archive at
https://public-inbox.org/git for previous bug reports and other discussions.

Issues which are security relevant should be disclosed privately to the Git Security mailing list <[email protected][6]>.

SEE ALSO

      gittutorial(7), gittutorial-2(7), giteveryday(7), gitcvs-migration(7),
      gitglossary(7), gitcore-tutorial(7), gitcli(7), The Git User's
      Manual[1], gitworkflows(7)

GIT
Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES
1. Git User's Manual file:///home/frederik/share/doc/git-doc/user-manual.html

2. Git concepts chapter of the user-manual file:///home/frederik/share/doc/git-doc/user-manual.html#git-concepts

3. howto file:///home/frederik/share/doc/git-doc/howto-index.html

4. Git API documentation file:///home/frederik/share/doc/git-doc/technical/api-index.html

5. [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]

6. [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]

Git 2.21.0.rc1.9.g3f 02/18/2019 GIT(1)

I don't think that it's really important to find a "best" ordering for commands or glossary terms; it's more a matter of finding someone who is willing to take responsibility for choosing a reasonable ordering. Presumably the head maintainer of this project could delegate the task to a qualified volunteer, not a newbie like myself but not necessarily someone with expert knowledge either. It's too bad that a policy of not listing things alphabetically wasn't adopted from the beginning of this project, but I guess that's life.