Professional Git

Chapter 11Doing More with Git

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Stashing work in progress
• Learning about Git commands to remove and rename files
• Searching through content and logs in Git
• Creating patches and external archives of Git content
• Cleaning up working directories and repositories
• Adding notes to commits already in the repository
• Using filter-branch to modify repositories
• Using bisect to find where something was first introduced
• Using rerere to remember and replay resolutions to merge conflicts

So far, most of this book has centered around the Git workflow and the more common source management operations you need to be able to work with it. In this chapter, I cover some less common—but nonetheless, very useful—commands that are available in Git. These are commands that you may not use very often, but when you need them for a specific purpose, it's good to understand how to use them. I begin with some commands for working with file and directory organization in your local environment.

MODIFYING THE LAYOUT OF FILES AND DIRECTORIES IN YOUR LOCAL ENVIRONMENT

When working with your OS, there are basic applications and commands for simple workflows, such as creating and locating files, seeing what's in the file system, and switching between directories. However, there are also supporting commands for doing things like copying, renaming, and deleting content.

Git also provides these commands for content that it manages. In this section, you'll look at some of these layout commands ...