git plumbing cheat sheet

plumbing.md

the plumbing commands

refs

• update-ref

  • update a branch (or other reference) to point to a specific commit sha

• symbolic-ref

  • update a reference (usually HEAD) to point to another reference (like a branch)

• rev-parse [something]

  • show the SHA of any weird git phrase

objects

• hash-object -w [file]

  • take any file or stdin and return a blob sha, optionally write to db

• cat-file

  • provide content or type and size information for repository objects

• ls-tree (-r) [sha]

  • show the entries of a git tree in the db

• read-tree

  • make the index look like a git tree in the db

• write-tree

  • record the current state of the index into a git tree in the db and return the sha

• commit-tree

  • create a commit object from a git tree in the db

index

• ls-files -s

  • show the entries of the index

• update-index

  • take an existing blob or a file from the work tree and update the index entry