Five Advanced, Rarely Used Git Commands

git bisect

When dealing with large codebases and complex changes, it can be challenging to identify the specific commit that introduced a bug or broke functionality. git bisect is a powerful command that uses a binary search algorithm to quickly pinpoint the exact commit that caused the issue. To use git bisect, you’ll need to provide a known good commit and a known bad commit. Git will then guide you through a series of steps, asking you to test and mark the commits as good or bad, until it narrows down the problematic commit.

After a biset session, you can reset the repository to its original state using git bisect reset.

git reflog

git reflog is a useful command for recovering lost commits, branches, or changes that you may have accidentally deleted or overwritten. The reflog maintains a record of all the HEAD references and branch tip updates, allowing you to navigate through your Git history and recover lost data. To view the reflog, simply run git reflog. To recover a lost commit, identify the desired commit’s hash in the reflog output, then create a new branch pointing to that commit using git branch new-branch-name commit-hash.

git cherry-pick

git cherry-pick allows you to apply the changes introduced by a specific commit from one branch onto another branch without merging the entire branch. This is useful when you want to include a specific bug fix or feature from another branch without incorporating all the changes from that branch. To cherry-pick a commit, first switch to the target branch using git checkout target-branch-name, then run git cherry-pick commit-hash.

git rev-parse

git rev-parse is a versatile command that resolves various Git references, such as commit hashes, branch names, or tags, into their canonical form. This is useful when you need to programmatically retrieve the commit hash or other reference data in scripts or automation tasks. For example, to get the commit hash of the current HEAD, run git rev-parse HEAD. To resolve a branch name to its commit hash, use git rev-parse branch-name.

git clean

When working on a project, it’s common to accumulate untracked files, such as build artifacts, temporary files, or logs. These files can clutter your workspace and make it difficult to maintain a clean and organized environment. The git clean command helps you remove untracked files from your working directory. To see a list of untracked files that would be removed, run git clean -n. To actually remove the files, use git clean -f. To remove untracked directories as well, add the -d flag: git clean -fd.

These commands may not be part of my everyday toolkit, knowing when and how to use them definitely comes in handy every now and then.