GITCLI(7)							    Git Manual								 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'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.

	       .ft C
	       $ 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)
	       .ft

       --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:

	   .ft C
	   $ git foo --long-opt=Arg
	   $ git foo --long-opt Arg
	   $ git foo -oArg
	   $ git foo -o Arg
	   .ft

       However, this is NOT allowed for switches with an optional value, where the sticked form must be used:

	   .ft C
	   $ git describe --abbrev HEAD     # correct
	   $ git describe --abbrev=10 HEAD  # correct
	   $ git describe --abbrev 10 HEAD  # NOT WHAT YOU MEANT
	   .ft

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.

       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 and http://marc.info/?l=git&m=119150393620273 for further information.

DOCUMENTATION

       Documentation by Pierre Habouzit and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org[1]>.

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES

	1. git@vger.kernel.org
	   mailto:git@vger.kernel.org

Git 1.7.1							    07/05/2010								 GITCLI(7)