# gitcli

## 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:
    
           •   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 given 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 ambiguities by enforcing the "options then args"
               rule).
    
           •   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.
    
           •   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 the difference 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 out and asks 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.
    
           •   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.
    
           •   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.
    
           •   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:
    
           •   Splitting short options to separate words (prefer **git foo -a**
               **-b** to **git foo -ab** , the latter may not even work).
    
           •   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.
    
           •   Despite the above suggestion, when Arg is a path relative to
               the home directory of a user, e.g.  **~/directory/file** or
               **~u/d/f** , you may want to use the separate form, e.g.  **git foo**
               **--file ~/mine** , not **git foo --file=~/mine**. The shell will
               expand **~/** in the former to your home directory, but most
               shells keep the tilde in the latter. Some of our commands know
               how to tilde-expand the option value even when given in the
               stuck form, but not all of them do.
    
           •   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.
    
           •   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**.
    
       **Options trump configuration and environment**
           When there is a configuration variable or an environment variable
           that tweak the behaviour of an aspect of a Git command, and also a
           command line option that tweaks the same, the command line option
           overrides what the configuration and/or environment variable say.
    
           For example, the **user.name** configuration variable is used to
           specify the human-readable name used by the **git commit** command to
           record the author and the committer name in a newly created
           commit. The **GIT_AUTHOR_NAME** environment variable, if set, takes
           precedence when deciding what author name to record. The
           **--author=**_< author>_ command line option of the **git commit** command,
           when given, takes precedence over these two sources of
           information.
    
       **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.
    
           •   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.
    
           •   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**.
    
           •   **--staged** is exactly like **--cached** , which is used to ask a
               command to only work on the index, not the working tree.
    
           •   **--worktree** is the opposite, to ask a command to work on the
               working tree only, not the index.
    
           •   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
    


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