NAME
----
-gitcli - git command line interface and conventions
+gitcli - Git command line interface and conventions
SYNOPSIS
--------
DESCRIPTION
-----------
-This manual describes the convention used throughout git CLI.
+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
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
+ * 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:
+scripting Git:
- * it's preferred to use the non dashed form of git commands, which means that
+ * 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`
`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.
+ * 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
+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 an exhaustive list of the facilities provided by this option parser.
+Here is a list of the facilities provided by this option parser.
Magic Options
---------------------------------------------
$ 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 in .git/refs
- --tags use any tag in .git/refs/tags
- --abbrev [<n>] use <n> digits to display SHA-1s
- --candidates <n> consider <n> most recent tags (default: 10)
+ --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
+ 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.
`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