GITCLI(7)                                                            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  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.

       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.


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


       o  it&#8217;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 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.

       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.

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 an exhaustive 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] <committish>*

                  --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)



       --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.


   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





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&#8201;--&#8201;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 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:
       http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116563135620359 and
       http://marc.info/?l=git&m=119150393620273:
       http://marc.info/?l=git&m=119150393620273 for further information.


GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite




                                                                     GITCLI(7)
