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GITCLI(7)                                             Git Manual                                            GITCLI(7)



NAME
       gitcli - Git command line interface and conventions

SYNOPSIS
       gitcli

DESCRIPTION
       This manual describes the convention used throughout Git CLI.

       Many commands take revisions (most often "commits", but sometimes "tree-ish", depending on the context and
       command) and paths as their arguments. Here are the rules:

       ·   Revisions come first and then paths. E.g. in git diff v1.0 v2.0 arch/x86 include/asm-x86, v1.0 and v2.0
           are revisions and arch/x86 and include/asm-x86 are paths.

       ·   When an argument can be misunderstood as either a revision or a path, they can be disambiguated by placing
           -- between them. E.g.  git diff -- HEAD is, "I have a file called HEAD in my work tree. Please show
           changes between the version I staged in the index and what I have in the work tree for that file". not
           "show difference between the HEAD commit and the work tree as a whole". You can say git diff HEAD -- to
           ask for the latter.

       ·   Without disambiguating --, Git makes a reasonable guess, but errors out and asking you to disambiguate
           when ambiguous. E.g. if you have a file called HEAD in your work tree, git diff HEAD is ambiguous, and you
           have to say either git diff HEAD -- or git diff -- HEAD to disambiguate.

           When writing a script that is expected to handle random user-input, it is a good practice to make it
           explicit which arguments are which by placing disambiguating -- at appropriate places.

       ·   Many commands allow wildcards in paths, but you need to protect them from getting globbed by the shell.
           These two mean different things:

               $ git checkout -- *.c
               $ git checkout -- \*.c

           The former lets your shell expand the fileglob, and you are asking the dot-C files in your working tree to
           be overwritten with the version in the index. The latter passes the *.c to Git, and you are asking the
           paths in the index that match the pattern to be checked out to your working tree. After running git add
           hello.c; rm hello.c, you will not see hello.c in your working tree with the former, but with the latter
           you will.

       Here are the rules regarding the "flags" that you should follow when you are scripting Git:

       ·   it’s preferred to use the non dashed form of Git commands, which means that you should prefer git foo to
           git-foo.

       ·   splitting short options to separate words (prefer git foo -a -b to git foo -ab, the latter may not even
           work).

       ·   when a command line option takes an argument, use the sticked form. In other words, write git foo -oArg
           instead of git foo -o Arg for short options, and git foo --long-opt=Arg instead of git foo --long-opt Arg
           for long options. An option that takes optional option-argument must be written in the sticked form.

       ·   when you give a revision parameter to a command, make sure the parameter is not ambiguous with a name of a
           file in the work tree. E.g. do not write git log -1 HEAD but write git log -1 HEAD --; the former will not
           work if you happen to have a file called HEAD in the work tree.


   Magic Options
       Commands which have the enhanced option parser activated all understand a couple of magic command line
       options:

       -h
           gives a pretty printed usage of the command.

               $ git describe -h
               usage: git describe [options] <committish>*
                  or: git describe [options] --dirty

                   --contains            find the tag that comes after the commit
                   --debug               debug search strategy on stderr
                   --all                 use any ref
                   --tags                use any tag, even unannotated
                   --long                always use long format
                   --abbrev[=<n>]        use <n> digits to display SHA-1s


       --help-all
           Some Git commands take options that are only used for plumbing or that are deprecated, and such options
           are hidden from the default usage. This option gives the full list of options.

   Negating options
       Options with long option names can be negated by prefixing --no-. For example, git branch has the option
       --track which is on by default. You can use --no-track to override that behaviour. The same goes for --color
       and --no-color.

   Aggregating short options
       Commands that support the enhanced option parser allow you to aggregate short options. This means that you can
       for example use git rm -rf or git clean -fdx.

   Abbreviating long options
       Commands that support the enhanced option parser accepts unique prefix of a long option as if it is fully
       spelled out, but use this with a caution. For example, git commit --amen behaves as if you typed git commit
       --amend, but that is true only until a later version of Git introduces another option that shares the same
       prefix, e.g `git commit --amenity" option.

   Separating argument from the option
       You can write the mandatory option parameter to an option as a separate word on the command line. That means
       that all the following uses work:

           $ git foo --long-opt=Arg
           $ git foo --long-opt Arg
           $ git foo -oArg
           $ git foo -o Arg


       However, this is NOT allowed for switches with an optional value, where the sticked form must be used:

           $ git describe --abbrev HEAD     # correct
           $ git describe --abbrev=10 HEAD  # correct
           $ git describe --abbrev 10 HEAD  # NOT WHAT YOU MEANT

           the index. For example, git stash apply usually merges changes recorded in a stash to the working tree,
           but with the --index option, it also merges changes to the index as well.

       git apply command can be used with --cached and --index (but not at the same time). Usually the command only
       affects the files in the working tree, but with --index, it patches both the files and their index entries,
       and with --cached, it modifies only the index entries.

       See also http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116563135620359 and http://marc.info/?l=git&m=119150393620273 for further
       information.

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite



Git 1.8.3.1                                           03/23/2016                                            GITCLI(7)