Git cheat sheet

I'm trying to wrap my head around Git, Linus Torvalds's complicated but powerful distributed version control system. Here's some quick notes and a wad of links:

Configure

git config --global user.name "John Q. Hacker"
git config --global user.email "jqhacker@somedomain.com"

Start a new empty repository

git init

mkdir fooalicious
cd fooalicious
git init
touch README
git add README
git commit -m 'first commit'
git remote add origin git@github.com:nastyhacks/foo.git
git push -u origin master

Create a local copy of a remote repository

git clone [remote-repository]

Commit to local repository

git commit -a -m "my message"

Review previous commits

git log --name-only

See what branches exist

git branch -v

Switch to a different branch

git checkout [branch you want to switch to]

Create a new branch and switch to it

git checkout -b [name of new branch]

Merge

git merge mybranch

merge the development in the branch "mybranch" into the current branch.

Show remote repositories tracked

git remote -v

Track a remote repository

git remote add --track master origin git@github.com:jqhacker/foo.git

Retrieve from a remote repository

git fetch

Git fetch grabs changes from remote repository and puts it in your repository's object database. It also fetches branches from remote repository and stores them as remote-tracking branches. (see this.)

Fetch and merge from a remote repository

git pull

Push to a remote repository

git push

Pull changes from another fork

git checkout -b otherguy-master master
git fetch https://github.com/otherguy/foo.git master
git merge otherguy-master/master

git checkout master
git merge otherguy-master
git push origin master

Resolve merge conflict in favor of us/them

git checkout --theirs another.txt
git checkout --ours some.file.txt

Diff between local working directory and remote tracking branch

Say you're working with Karen on a project. She adds some nifty features to the source file nifty_files/our_code.py. You'd like to diff your local working copy against hers to see the changes, and prepare to merge them in. First, make sure you have a remote tracking branch for Karen's repo.

git remote add karen git://github.com/karen/our_project.git
git remote -v

The results ought to look something like this:

karen git://github.com/karen/our_project.git (fetch)
karen git://github.com/karen/our_project.git (push)
origin git@github.com:cbare/our_project.git (fetch)
origin git@github.com:cbare/our_project.git (push)

Next, fetch Karen's changes into your local repo. Git can't do a diff across the network, so we have to get a local copy of Karen's commits stored in a remote tracking branch.

git fetch karen

Now, we can do our diff.

git diff karen/master:nifty_files/our_code.py nifty_files/our_code.py

Fixing a messed up working tree

git reset --hard HEAD

return the entire working tree to the last committed state

Shorthand naming

Branches, remote-tracking branches, and tags are all references to commits. Git allows shorthand, so you mostly ever shorthand rather than full names:

• The branch "test" is short for "refs/heads/test".
• The tag "v2.6.18" is short for "refs/tags/v2.6.18".
• "origin/master" is short for "refs/remotes/origin/master".

Links

• Git User’s Manual Mostly cryptic but occasionally very helpful. See:
  • public repositories
  • resolving a merge
  • Quick Reference
  • Git Glossay
• Git Tutorial
• github's Git cheat sheets
• github on Working with remotes
• The Git Community Book
• Understanding Git Conceptually
• Git - SVN Crash Course
• The thing about Git by Ryan Tomayko
• git ready
• git equivalent of svn status -u
• git: fetch and merge, don’t pull
• Git Cheat Sheet
• Mastering Git Basics video presentation by Tom Preston-Werner of GitHub

• Think Like a Git
• Git Best Practices
• A Successful Git Branching Model

Tech Industry Gossip

Welcome to the new decade: Java is a restricted platform, Google is evil, Apple is a monopoly and Microsoft are the underdogs

I mostly try to ignore tech industry gossip. But, there's a lot of it, lately. And underlying the shenanigans are big changes in the computing landscape.

First, there's the flurry of lawsuits. This is illustrated nicely by the Economist in The great patent battle. There are several similar graphs of the patent thicket floating around. IP law is increasingly being used as a tool to lock customers in and competitors out. We can expect the (sarcastically named) "Citizens United" ruling on campaign finance to result in more of this particular kind of antisocial behavior.

Google and Facebook are in a pitched battle over your personal data and engineering talent. Google engineers, apparently, are trying to jump over to Facebook prior to what promises to be a huge IPO.

Apple caused quite a kerfuffle by deprecating Java on Mac OS X. After remaining ominously silent for weeks, Oracle seems to have lined up both Apple and IBM behind OpenJDK. Apache Harmony looks to be a casualty of this maneuvering. Harmony, probably not coincidentally, is the basis for parts of Google's Android and Oracle is suing Google over Android's use of Java technology.

Microsoft seems to be waning in importance along with the desktop in general. Ray Ozzie, Chief Architect since 2005, announced that he was leaving, following Robbie Bach of the XBox division and Stephen Elop, now running Nokia. I spoke with one MS marketing guy who said of Ozzie, "Lost him? I'd say we got rid of him!" A lesser noticed departure, that of Jython and Iron Python creator Jim Hugunin may also be telling. Profitable stagnation seems to be the game plan there.

Adobe's been struggling to the point where the NYTimes asked where does Adobe go from here? They took a beating over flash performance and rumors circulated briefly of a buyout by Microsoft.

The cloud is where a lot of the action in software development is moving. Mobile has been growing in importance by leaps and bounds ever since the launch of the iPhone. Cloud computing and consumer devices like smart phones, tablets, and even Kindles are complementary to a certain extent. The economics of cloud computing are hard to argue with. (See James Hamilton's slides and video on data centers.)

Another part of what's changing is a swing of the pendulum away from openness and back towards the walled gardens that most of us thought were left behind in the ashes of Compuserve and AOL. Ironically enough, Apple has become the poster child of walled gardens, with iTunes and the app store. ...the mobile carriers even more so. And the cloud infrastructures of both Microsoft's Azure and (to a lesser degree) Google's App Engine are proprietary. Out of the big 3, Amazon's EC2 is, by far, the most open. Mark Zuckerberg says, "I’m trying to make the world a more open place." But, to Tim Berners-Lee, Facebook and Apple threaten the internet.

There's plenty of money in serving the bulk population. That's why Walmart is so huge. My fear is that in a rush to provide "sugar water" to consumers, the computing industry will neglect the creative people that made the industry so vibrant. But, not to worry. Ray Ozzie's essay Dawn of a new Day does a nice job of putting into perspective the embarrassment of riches that technology has yielded. We're just at the beginning of figuring out what to do with it all.