The Ultimate Git Command List: 50 Must-Know Commands for Developers

Here are 50 Git commands that are commonly used in various stages of version control workflow:

Basic Commands

git init - Initialize a new Git repository
git clone [url] - Clone a repository into a new directory
git add [file] - Add a file to the staging area
git commit -m "[message]" - Commit changes to the repository with a message
git status - Show the working tree status
git branch - List, create, or delete branches
git checkout [branch] - Switch to a specified branch
git merge [branch] - Merge a branch into the active branch
git pull [remote] [branch] - Pull changes from a remote repository
git push [remote] [branch] - Push changes to a remote repository

Advanced Branching & Merging

git branch -d [branch] - Delete a branch
git checkout -b [branch] - Create and switch to a new branch
git merge --no-ff [branch] - Merge with a commit even if fast-forward is possible
git stash - Stash changes in a dirty working directory
git stash pop - Apply stashed changes back to the working directory

Inspection and Comparison

git log - Show commit logs
git log --follow [file] - Show the commits that changed file
git diff - Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc.
git diff --staged - Show changes between the staging area and the latest commit
git show [commit] - Show various types of objects

Undoing Changes

git reset [file] - Unstage a file while retaining the changes in working directory
git reset --hard [commit] - Reset the staging area and working directory to a specific commit
git revert [commit] - Revert some existing commits
git rm [file] - Remove files from the working tree and the index

Working with Remotes

git remote - Manage set of tracked repositories
git remote add [remote] [url] - Add a new remote
git fetch [remote] - Download objects and refs from another repository
git push [remote] [branch] - Update remote refs along with associated objects
git pull - Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch

Temporary Commits

git stash - Stash the changes in a dirty working directory
git stash list - List stack-order of stashed file changes
git stash drop - Remove a single stashed state from the stash list
git stash clear - Remove all the stashed states

Tagging

git tag - List, create, delete or verify a tag object signed with GPG
git tag -a [tag] -m [message] - Create an annotated tag
git push [remote] [tag] - Share a tag

Git Configurations

git config --global user.name "[name]" - Define the author name to be used for all commits in the current repo.
git config --global user.email "[email address]" - Define the author email to be used for all commits in the current repo.

Patching

git apply [patch] - Apply a patch to files and/or to the index
git cherry-pick [commit] - Apply the changes introduced by some existing commits

Searching

git grep [string] - Search for a string in the tracked files
git bisect - Use binary search to find the commit that introduced a bug

Submodules

git submodule add [url] [path] - Add a new submodule
git submodule init - Initialize a submodule
git submodule update - Update the submodules

Advanced Git

git rebase [branch] - Reapply commits on top of another base tip
git rebase --interactive - Perform an interactive rebase
git filter-branch - Rewrite branches

Other

git archive - Create an archive of files from a named tree
git gc - Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository

These commands cover a wide range of Git functionalities, from basic setup and daily usage to more advanced features like branching, merging, and handling remote repositories.