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:

       o   Options come first and then args. A subcommand may take dashed
	   options (which may take their own arguments, e.g. "--max-parents
	   2") and arguments. You SHOULD give dashed options first and then
	   arguments. Some commands may accept dashed options after you have
	   already gave non-option arguments (which may make the command
	   ambiguous), but you should not rely on it (because eventually we
	   may find a way to fix these ambiguity by enforcing the "options
	   then args" rule).

       o   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.

       o   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.

       o   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.

       o   Because -- disambiguates revisions and paths in some commands, it
	   cannot be used for those commands to separate options and
	   revisions. You can use --end-of-options for this (it also works for
	   commands that do not distinguish between revisions in paths, in
	   which case it is simply an alias for --).

	   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.

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

	       $ git restore *.c
	       $ git restore \*.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.

       o   Just as the filesystem .  (period) refers to the current directory,
	   using a .  as a repository name in Git (a dot-repository) is a
	   relative path and means your current repository.

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

       o   It's preferred to use the non-dashed form of Git commands, which
	   means that you should prefer git foo to git-foo.

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

       o   When a command-line option takes an argument, use the stuck 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 stuck form.

       o   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.

       o   Many commands allow a long option --option to be abbreviated only
	   to their unique prefix (e.g. if there is no other option whose name
	   begins with opt, you may be able to spell --opt to invoke the
	   --option flag), but you should fully spell them out when writing
	   your scripts; later versions of Git may introduce a new option
	   whose name shares the same prefix, e.g.  --optimize, to make a
	   short prefix that used to be unique no longer unique.

ENHANCED OPTION PARSER
       From the Git 1.5.4 series and further, many Git commands (not all of
       them at the time of the writing though) come with an enhanced option
       parser.

       Here is a list of the facilities provided by this option parser.

   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>] <commit-ish>*
		  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

	   Note that some subcommand (e.g.  git grep) may behave differently
	   when there are things on the command line other than -h, but git
	   subcmd -h without anything else on the command line is meant to
	   consistently give the usage.

       --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 stuck form must be used:

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


NOTES ON FREQUENTLY CONFUSED OPTIONS
       Many commands that can work on files in the working tree and/or in the
       index can take --cached and/or --index options. Sometimes people
       incorrectly think that, because the index was originally called cache,
       these two are synonyms. They are not -- these two options mean very
       different things.

       o   The --cached option is used to ask a command that usually works on
	   files in the working tree to only work with the index. For example,
	   git grep, when used without a commit to specify from which commit
	   to look for strings in, usually works on files in the working tree,
	   but with the --cached option, it looks for strings in the index.

       o   The --index option is used to ask a command that usually works on
	   files in the working tree to also affect the index. For example,
	   git stash apply usually merges changes recorded in a stash entry 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
       https://lore.kernel.org/git/7v64clg5u9.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net/
       and
       https://lore.kernel.org/git/7vy7ej9g38.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org/
       for further information.

       Some other commands that also work on files in the working tree and/or
       in the index can take --staged and/or --worktree.

       o   --staged is exactly like --cached, which is used to ask a command
	   to only work on the index, not the working tree.

       o   --worktree is the opposite, to ask a command to work on the working
	   tree only, not the index.

       o   The two options can be specified together to ask a command to work
	   on both the index and the working tree.

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite



Git 2.38.4			  05/16/2024			     GITCLI(7)