I have weird problem with Git bash. I have two Github accounts, let’s say A and B. I set my name and email, like in account A:
git config --global user.name
git config --global user.email
I initialized new repo, did a commit, then push and git bash
asked me about login and password to github. By mistake I put login and password for account B! I logged in successfully, but there is no repository I just initialized.
How can I logout and login to different github account? It’s not user.name
nor user.email
Jason Aller
3,50728 gold badges42 silver badges38 bronze badges
asked Jan 17, 2017 at 5:03
8
Much simpler, as I explained in «How to sign out in Git Bash console in Windows?»:
git credential-manager erase <url>
Here
git credential-manager erase https://github.com
No need to remove the credential helper which is practical for caching user’s password.
Or (replace xxx wit the output of git config --global credential.helper
):
printf "protocol=httpsnhost=github.com" | git-credential-xxx erase
# Windows (2020-2021)
printf "protocol=httpsnhost=github.com" | git-credential-manager-core erase
# Linux
printf "protocol=httpsnhost=github.com" | git-credential-libsecret erase
# MacOs
printf "protocol=httpsnhost=github.com" | git-credential-osxkeychain erase
answered Jan 17, 2017 at 5:36
VonCVonC
1.2m508 gold badges4248 silver badges5069 bronze badges
1
My situation is I had change my gitlab.com’s account email, then my local git repository can not push. saTya ‘s answer worked, but in windows 10 1903, it is Control Panel -> Credential Manager -> Windows Credentials -> Generic Credentials.
answered Aug 28, 2019 at 9:19
leolmqleolmq
1911 silver badge6 bronze badges
In windows search for Manage window credentials
This window will get opened
in that look into generic credentials for git login, Then remove it by expanding it and pressing remove. After try to push your code via git bash, it will automatically ask you to login.so you can login with your another account. hope its helpful.
answered Oct 13, 2020 at 7:23
AravinthAravinth
851 silver badge2 bronze badges
If you’re already connect to any github account after some time you went to pull or push some other repository which belong to some other account.
Example:
I have already connected or my github account username and password is verifed which is «account@gmail.com» it work and find everything is okay, but if I want another directory which is belong to some other account. as I pull it. gitbash generates an error «your required repository is not found». It was actually due to connecting your gitbash to an old account. First of all you have to remove all old credentials and add a new account. Then it will work fine.
Example:
to remove old credentials, use this command
git credential-manager delete https://github.com
and add again username user name and email
git config user.name = "new_username"
git config user.email= "newEmail@gmail.com"
after the verification push or pull you repository
git pull -u origin master
Then it will work fine and your code will push or pull from a remote repository which belongs to other account.
answered Jun 19, 2020 at 15:45
1
Change username and email global
git config --global user.name "<username>"
git config --global user.email "<email>"
Change username and email for current repo
git config user.name "<username>" --replace-all
git config user.email "<email>" --replace-all
answered Oct 31, 2020 at 22:50
PurgoufrPurgoufr
71513 silver badges22 bronze badges
1
One solution: change SSH key.
At the Begin, I have an account A.
Then, I have a ssh key on ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
. I add this key to GitHub ssh key list https://github.com/settings/keys.
When I try to push commit to GitHub in CLI, the GitHub will know who I am.
Now, I want to switch my git account for GitHub. I just add transfer ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
to my account B in GitHub settings.
After this, when I try to push to GitHub, GitHub will think I am B.
answered Mar 2, 2019 at 11:11
bytefishbytefish
2,3163 gold badges20 silver badges34 bronze badges
I have two github accounts. One for hobby one for work.
I generated another ssh key for work: ~/.ssh/.id_rsa_work.pub
then add it to my work account: https://github.com/jack
.
In my ~/.ssh/config
, now I added this for work account:
Host github-work
HostName github.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_work
Then when I want to clone from company repo git@github.com:company_org_name/company_repo_name.git
,
I run(note the github-work
part):
$ git clone git@github-work:company_org_name/company_repo_name.git
That’s it.
Don’t forget to set local name and email for company repo right after you run git clone
.
git config user.name "my name at company"
git config user.email "my email at company"
Now you have multiple accounts on your device. You won’t feel any difference from now on.
answered Jun 12, 2022 at 7:36
shrekuushrekuu
1,4261 gold badge20 silver badges37 bronze badges
git credentials will be searched for ~/.git-credentials
or ~/.config/git/credentials
files. You can search these files and if found then modify it.
$ git config --global --unset credential.helper
# search file
$ sudo find / -type f -name .git-credentials
$ sudo find / -type f -name credentials
For Windows, manager
stores your credentials. It has a Control Panel Interface
where you can edit or delete
your stored credential.
$ git config --global credential.helper manager
answered Jan 17, 2017 at 5:15
Sajib KhanSajib Khan
21.9k8 gold badges63 silver badges72 bronze badges
3
If you are not able to clone from repo saying git clone getting remote repository not found even if the repo exist in git bash.
Here you just need to delete the old credential and then try to access the repo with proper repo account access credentials.
git credential-manager delete https://github.com
( deleteing old credential)
In repo url add <username>@
before github.com
git clone --branch https://<username>@github.com/abhinav/myproj.git
Now you will get a login popup so provide the credentials
Then cloning will be performed successfully.
answered Aug 4, 2020 at 7:39
abhinav kumarabhinav kumar
1,4371 gold badge11 silver badges20 bronze badges
i had similar problem at «intellegy IDEA», in it’s terminal , spent 2 hours, but only need to do: intelliIDEA->references (for Mac IDEA) or file->settings (for windows) to choose gitHub delete account, add new (it can have problems too, in browser need to came in decired account) press apply
answered Nov 3, 2022 at 23:48
I have weird problem with Git bash. I have two Github accounts, let’s say A and B. I set my name and email, like in account A:
git config --global user.name
git config --global user.email
I initialized new repo, did a commit, then push and git bash
asked me about login and password to github. By mistake I put login and password for account B! I logged in successfully, but there is no repository I just initialized.
How can I logout and login to different github account? It’s not user.name
nor user.email
Jason Aller
3,50728 gold badges42 silver badges38 bronze badges
asked Jan 17, 2017 at 5:03
8
Much simpler, as I explained in «How to sign out in Git Bash console in Windows?»:
git credential-manager erase <url>
Here
git credential-manager erase https://github.com
No need to remove the credential helper which is practical for caching user’s password.
Or (replace xxx wit the output of git config --global credential.helper
):
printf "protocol=httpsnhost=github.com" | git-credential-xxx erase
# Windows (2020-2021)
printf "protocol=httpsnhost=github.com" | git-credential-manager-core erase
# Linux
printf "protocol=httpsnhost=github.com" | git-credential-libsecret erase
# MacOs
printf "protocol=httpsnhost=github.com" | git-credential-osxkeychain erase
answered Jan 17, 2017 at 5:36
VonCVonC
1.2m508 gold badges4248 silver badges5069 bronze badges
1
My situation is I had change my gitlab.com’s account email, then my local git repository can not push. saTya ‘s answer worked, but in windows 10 1903, it is Control Panel -> Credential Manager -> Windows Credentials -> Generic Credentials.
answered Aug 28, 2019 at 9:19
leolmqleolmq
1911 silver badge6 bronze badges
In windows search for Manage window credentials
This window will get opened
in that look into generic credentials for git login, Then remove it by expanding it and pressing remove. After try to push your code via git bash, it will automatically ask you to login.so you can login with your another account. hope its helpful.
answered Oct 13, 2020 at 7:23
AravinthAravinth
851 silver badge2 bronze badges
If you’re already connect to any github account after some time you went to pull or push some other repository which belong to some other account.
Example:
I have already connected or my github account username and password is verifed which is «account@gmail.com» it work and find everything is okay, but if I want another directory which is belong to some other account. as I pull it. gitbash generates an error «your required repository is not found». It was actually due to connecting your gitbash to an old account. First of all you have to remove all old credentials and add a new account. Then it will work fine.
Example:
to remove old credentials, use this command
git credential-manager delete https://github.com
and add again username user name and email
git config user.name = "new_username"
git config user.email= "newEmail@gmail.com"
after the verification push or pull you repository
git pull -u origin master
Then it will work fine and your code will push or pull from a remote repository which belongs to other account.
answered Jun 19, 2020 at 15:45
1
Change username and email global
git config --global user.name "<username>"
git config --global user.email "<email>"
Change username and email for current repo
git config user.name "<username>" --replace-all
git config user.email "<email>" --replace-all
answered Oct 31, 2020 at 22:50
PurgoufrPurgoufr
71513 silver badges22 bronze badges
1
One solution: change SSH key.
At the Begin, I have an account A.
Then, I have a ssh key on ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
. I add this key to GitHub ssh key list https://github.com/settings/keys.
When I try to push commit to GitHub in CLI, the GitHub will know who I am.
Now, I want to switch my git account for GitHub. I just add transfer ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
to my account B in GitHub settings.
After this, when I try to push to GitHub, GitHub will think I am B.
answered Mar 2, 2019 at 11:11
bytefishbytefish
2,3163 gold badges20 silver badges34 bronze badges
I have two github accounts. One for hobby one for work.
I generated another ssh key for work: ~/.ssh/.id_rsa_work.pub
then add it to my work account: https://github.com/jack
.
In my ~/.ssh/config
, now I added this for work account:
Host github-work
HostName github.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_work
Then when I want to clone from company repo git@github.com:company_org_name/company_repo_name.git
,
I run(note the github-work
part):
$ git clone git@github-work:company_org_name/company_repo_name.git
That’s it.
Don’t forget to set local name and email for company repo right after you run git clone
.
git config user.name "my name at company"
git config user.email "my email at company"
Now you have multiple accounts on your device. You won’t feel any difference from now on.
answered Jun 12, 2022 at 7:36
shrekuushrekuu
1,4261 gold badge20 silver badges37 bronze badges
git credentials will be searched for ~/.git-credentials
or ~/.config/git/credentials
files. You can search these files and if found then modify it.
$ git config --global --unset credential.helper
# search file
$ sudo find / -type f -name .git-credentials
$ sudo find / -type f -name credentials
For Windows, manager
stores your credentials. It has a Control Panel Interface
where you can edit or delete
your stored credential.
$ git config --global credential.helper manager
answered Jan 17, 2017 at 5:15
Sajib KhanSajib Khan
21.9k8 gold badges63 silver badges72 bronze badges
3
If you are not able to clone from repo saying git clone getting remote repository not found even if the repo exist in git bash.
Here you just need to delete the old credential and then try to access the repo with proper repo account access credentials.
git credential-manager delete https://github.com
( deleteing old credential)
In repo url add <username>@
before github.com
git clone --branch https://<username>@github.com/abhinav/myproj.git
Now you will get a login popup so provide the credentials
Then cloning will be performed successfully.
answered Aug 4, 2020 at 7:39
abhinav kumarabhinav kumar
1,4371 gold badge11 silver badges20 bronze badges
i had similar problem at «intellegy IDEA», in it’s terminal , spent 2 hours, but only need to do: intelliIDEA->references (for Mac IDEA) or file->settings (for windows) to choose gitHub delete account, add new (it can have problems too, in browser need to came in decired account) press apply
answered Nov 3, 2022 at 23:48
there are 3 ways we can fix this issue
method-1 (command line)
To set your account’s default identity globally
run below commands
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.password "your password"
To set the identity only in current repository , remove --global
and run below commands in your Project/Repo root directory
git config user.email "you@example.com"
git config user.name "Your Name"
git config user.password "your password"
Example:
email -> organization email Id
name -> mostly <employee Id> or <FirstName, LastName>
**Note: ** you can check these values in your GitHub profile or Bitbucket profile
method-2 (.gitconfig)
create a .gitconfig file in your home folder if it doesn’t exist.
and paste the following lines in .gitconfig
[user]
name = FirstName, LastName
email = FirstName.LastName@company.com
password = abcdxyz
[http]
sslVerify = false
proxy =
[https]
sslverify = false
proxy = https://corp\<uname>:<password>@<proxyhost>:<proxy-port>
[push]
default = simple
[credential]
helper = cache --timeout=360000000
[core]
autocrlf = false
Note: you can remove the proxy lines from the above , if you are not behind the proxy
Home directory to create .gitconfig file:
windows : c/users/< username or empID >
Mac or Linux : run this command to go to home directory cd ~
or simply run the following commands one after the other
git config --global --edit
git commit --amend --reset-author
method-3 (git credential pop up)
windows :
Control Panel >> User Account >> Credential Manager >> Windows Credential >> Generic Credential
>> look for any github cert/credential and delete it.
then running any git command will prompt to enter new user name and
password (Note: some times you will not be prompted for password for git pull).
Mac :
command+space >> search for "keychain Access" and click ok >>
search for any certificate/file with gitHub >> delete it.
then running any git command will prompt to enter new user name and
password(Note:some times you will not be prompted for password for git pull).
As a basic refresher for most working on multiple coding projects or git-scm hosted accounts changing from one git account to another begs the question:
How do I see or change my Git (or github) username (usually email address)?
How to show your Git username – the basics
Use one of these methods:
- git config -get [user.name | user.email]
- git config –list
- or, open your git config file directly
Let’s examine each of these show your git username basics:
#1 – Use the command, git config -get [user.name | user.email]
git config user.name
This returns
Christian Screen
And if you enter git config user.email from the terminal from anywhere with your git initiated directory such as
git config user.email
this will return
cscreen@aiteamsuperstars.com
#2 – Use the command, ‘git config –list’
This approach shows all of the key configurations from your git config file, so entering the command from the terminal:
git config --list
will return the following:
credential.helper=osxkeychain
user.name=Christian Screen
user.email=cscreen@aiteamsuperstars.com
core.repositoryformatversion=0
core.filemode=true
core.bare=false
core.logallrefupdates=true
core.ignorecase=true
core.precomposeunicode=true
remote.origin.url=https://github.com/aicglabs/datalakehouse.git
#3 – Use the ‘open your git config file directly’ approach via the terminal
If the above approaches for some reason did not work then open the file for reading/editing in your terminal window or favorite editor. Terminal window review and editing is recommended to avoid issues. Use the following command to view the global git settings:
vi ~/.gitconfig
This will open the VimEditor and your .gitconfig file should look something like this:
[user]
name = Christian Screen
email = cscreen@aiteamsuperstars.com
Since this is your ‘global’ git user information (using the user home director path, ~/) you could have a different settings in other projects you might be working on.
NB: I find it best that if you have a specific project you are contributing to and need to use different credentials for the contribution, you should clone the project and then within the project use the command line to change your user.name and user.email just for that local git repository clone project to not impact your global settings. This would look like this from the command line (notice the –global is missing):
git config user.name "Christian Contribution Project"
git config user.email "christian@personalemail.com"
Read below if you’d like to see how to change your global Git username or email address.
How to change your Git username – the basics
Changing your Git username is fairly straightforward. In your terminal window enter the following:
git config --global user.name "Christian The Architect"
You can then view the change directly in the ~/.gitconfig file or just use the ~/.gitconfig file to edit the user.name key/value pair directly in the Vim Editor as you see here:
vi ~/.gitconfig
Since this is again your global Git config file, be sure edit it carefully. Remember in the Vi(m) Editor, use the ‘Esc’ key and then type ‘wq’ and then press the ‘Return’ or ‘Enter’ key to write/save the file and exit.
How to change your Git email address – the basics
You can change your email address with the same process and command as you would your username using these commands from the terminal:
git config --global user.email "cscreen@aiteamsuperstars.com"
View any of your global changes (those made with the –global flag) using either command below:
cat ~/.gitconfig
vi ~/.gitconfig
Hopefully you’ll have success remembering these basic Git commands.
NAME
gitfaq — Frequently asked questions about using Git
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
The examples in this FAQ assume a standard POSIX shell, like bash
or dash
,
and a user, A U Thor, who has the account author
on the hosting provider
git.example.org
.
Configuration
- What should I put in
user.name
? -
You should put your personal name, generally a form using a given name
and family name. For example, the current maintainer of Git uses «Junio
C Hamano». This will be the name portion that is stored in every commit
you make.This configuration doesn’t have any effect on authenticating to remote services;
for that, seecredential.username
in git-config[1].
- What does
http.postBuffer
really do? -
This option changes the size of the buffer that Git uses when pushing
data to a remote over HTTP or HTTPS. If the data is larger than this
size, libcurl, which handles the HTTP support for Git, will use chunked
transfer encoding since it isn’t known ahead of time what the size of
the pushed data will be.Leaving this value at the default size is fine unless you know that either the
remote server or a proxy in the middle doesn’t support HTTP/1.1 (which
introduced the chunked transfer encoding) or is known to be broken with chunked
data. This is often (erroneously) suggested as a solution for generic push
problems, but since almost every server and proxy supports at least HTTP/1.1,
raising this value usually doesn’t solve most push problems. A server or proxy
that didn’t correctly support HTTP/1.1 and chunked transfer encoding wouldn’t be
that useful on the Internet today, since it would break lots of traffic.Note that increasing this value will increase the memory used on every relevant
push that Git does over HTTP or HTTPS, since the entire buffer is allocated
regardless of whether or not it is all used. Thus, it’s best to leave it at the
default unless you are sure you need a different value.
- How do I configure a different editor?
-
If you haven’t specified an editor specifically for Git, it will by default
use the editor you’ve configured using theVISUAL
orEDITOR
environment
variables, or if neither is specified, the system default (which is usually
vi
). Since some people findvi
difficult to use or prefer a different
editor, it may be desirable to change the editor used.If you want to configure a general editor for most programs which need one, you
can edit your shell configuration (e.g.,~/.bashrc
or~/.zshenv
) to contain
a line setting theEDITOR
orVISUAL
environment variable to an appropriate
value. For example, if you prefer the editornano
, then you could write the
following:If you want to configure an editor specifically for Git, you can either set the
core.editor
configuration value or theGIT_EDITOR
environment variable. You
can see git-var[1] for details on the order in which these options are
consulted.Note that in all cases, the editor value will be passed to the shell, so any
arguments containing spaces should be appropriately quoted. Additionally, if
your editor normally detaches from the terminal when invoked, you should specify
it with an argument that makes it not do that, or else Git will not see any
changes. An example of a configuration addressing both of these issues on
Windows would be the configuration"C:Program FilesVimgvim.exe" --nofork
,
which quotes the filename with spaces and specifies the--nofork
option to
avoid backgrounding the process.
Credentials
- How do I specify my credentials when pushing over HTTP?
-
The easiest way to do this is to use a credential helper via the
credential.helper
configuration. Most systems provide a standard
choice to integrate with the system credential manager. For example,
Git for Windows provides thewincred
credential manager, macOS has the
osxkeychain
credential manager, and Unix systems with a standard
desktop environment can use thelibsecret
credential manager. All of
these store credentials in an encrypted store to keep your passwords or
tokens secure.In addition, you can use the
store
credential manager which stores in a file
in your home directory, or thecache
credential manager, which does not
permanently store your credentials, but does prevent you from being prompted for
them for a certain period of time.You can also just enter your password when prompted. While it is possible to
place the password (which must be percent-encoded) in the URL, this is not
particularly secure and can lead to accidental exposure of credentials, so it is
not recommended.
- How do I read a password or token from an environment variable?
-
The
credential.helper
configuration option can also take an arbitrary
shell command that produces the credential protocol on standard output.
This is useful when passing credentials into a container, for example.Such a shell command can be specified by starting the option value with an
exclamation point. If your password or token were stored in theGIT_TOKEN
,
you could run the following command to set your credential helper:$ git config credential.helper '!f() { echo username=author; echo "password=$GIT_TOKEN"; };f'
- How do I change the password or token I’ve saved in my credential manager?
-
Usually, if the password or token is invalid, Git will erase it and
prompt for a new one. However, there are times when this doesn’t always
happen. To change the password or token, you can erase the existing
credentials and then Git will prompt for new ones. To erase
credentials, use a syntax like the following (substituting your username
and the hostname):$ echo url=https://author@git.example.org | git credential reject
- How do I use multiple accounts with the same hosting provider using HTTP?
-
Usually the easiest way to distinguish between these accounts is to use
the username in the URL. For example, if you have the accountsauthor
andcommitter
ongit.example.org
, you can use the URLs
https://author@git.example.org/org1/project1.git and
https://committer@git.example.org/org2/project2.git. This way, when you
use a credential helper, it will automatically try to look up the
correct credentials for your account. If you already have a remote set
up, you can change the URL with something likegit remote set-url
(see
origin https://author@git.example.org/org1/project1.git
git-remote[1] for details).
- How do I use multiple accounts with the same hosting provider using SSH?
-
With most hosting providers that support SSH, a single key pair uniquely
identifies a user. Therefore, to use multiple accounts, it’s necessary
to create a key pair for each account. If you’re using a reasonably
modern OpenSSH version, you can create a new key pair with something
likessh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/id_committer
. You can then
register the public key (in this case,~/.ssh/id_committer.pub
; note
the.pub
) with the hosting provider.Most hosting providers use a single SSH account for pushing; that is, all users
push to thegit
account (e.g.,git@git.example.org
). If that’s the case for
your provider, you can set up multiple aliases in SSH to make it clear which key
pair to use. For example, you could write something like the following in
~/.ssh/config
, substituting the proper private key file:# This is the account for author on git.example.org. Host example_author HostName git.example.org User git # This is the key pair registered for author with git.example.org. IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_author IdentitiesOnly yes # This is the account for committer on git.example.org. Host example_committer HostName git.example.org User git # This is the key pair registered for committer with git.example.org. IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_committer IdentitiesOnly yes
Then, you can adjust your push URL to use
git@example_author
or
git@example_committer
instead ofgit@example.org
(e.g.,git remote set-url
).
git@example_author:org1/project1.git
Common Issues
- I’ve made a mistake in the last commit. How do I change it?
-
You can make the appropriate change to your working tree, run
git add
or
<file>git rm <file>
, as appropriate, to stage it, and thengit
. Your change will be included in the commit, and you’ll
commit --amend
be prompted to edit the commit message again; if you wish to use the
original message verbatim, you can use the--no-edit
option togit
in addition, or just save and quit when your editor opens.
commit
- I’ve made a change with a bug and it’s been included in the main branch. How should I undo it?
-
The usual way to deal with this is to use
git revert
. This preserves
the history that the original change was made and was a valuable
contribution, but also introduces a new commit that undoes those changes
because the original had a problem. The commit message of the revert
indicates the commit which was reverted and is usually edited to include
an explanation as to why the revert was made.
- How do I ignore changes to a tracked file?
-
Git doesn’t provide a way to do this. The reason is that if Git needs
to overwrite this file, such as during a checkout, it doesn’t know
whether the changes to the file are precious and should be kept, or
whether they are irrelevant and can safely be destroyed. Therefore, it
has to take the safe route and always preserve them.It’s tempting to try to use certain features of
git update-index
, namely the
assume-unchanged and skip-worktree bits, but these don’t work properly for this
purpose and shouldn’t be used this way.If your goal is to modify a configuration file, it can often be helpful to have
a file checked into the repository which is a template or set of defaults which
can then be copied alongside and modified as appropriate. This second, modified
file is usually ignored to prevent accidentally committing it.
- I asked Git to ignore various files, yet they are still tracked
-
A
gitignore
file ensures that certain file(s) which are not
tracked by Git remain untracked. However, sometimes particular
file(s) may have been tracked before adding them into the
.gitignore
, hence they still remain tracked. To untrack and
ignore files/patterns, usegit rm --cached <file/pattern>
and add a pattern to.gitignore
that matches the <file>.
See gitignore[5] for details.
- How do I know if I want to do a fetch or a pull?
-
A fetch stores a copy of the latest changes from the remote
repository, without modifying the working tree or current branch.
You can then at your leisure inspect, merge, rebase on top of, or
ignore the upstream changes. A pull consists of a fetch followed
immediately by either a merge or rebase. See git-pull[1].
Merging and Rebasing
- What kinds of problems can occur when merging long-lived branches with squash merges?
-
In general, there are a variety of problems that can occur when using squash
merges to merge two branches multiple times. These can include seeing extra
commits ingit log
output, with a GUI, or when using the...
notation to
express a range, as well as the possibility of needing to re-resolve conflicts
again and again.When Git does a normal merge between two branches, it considers exactly three
points: the two branches and a third commit, called the merge base, which is
usually the common ancestor of the commits. The result of the merge is the sum
of the changes between the merge base and each head. When you merge two
branches with a regular merge commit, this results in a new commit which will
end up as a merge base when they’re merged again, because there is now a new
common ancestor. Git doesn’t have to consider changes that occurred before the
merge base, so you don’t have to re-resolve any conflicts you resolved before.When you perform a squash merge, a merge commit isn’t created; instead, the
changes from one side are applied as a regular commit to the other side. This
means that the merge base for these branches won’t have changed, and so when Git
goes to perform its next merge, it considers all of the changes that it
considered the last time plus the new changes. That means any conflicts may
need to be re-resolved. Similarly, anything using the...
notation ingit
,
diffgit log
, or a GUI will result in showing all of the changes since the
original merge base.As a consequence, if you want to merge two long-lived branches repeatedly, it’s
best to always use a regular merge commit.
- If I make a change on two branches but revert it on one, why does the merge of those branches include the change?
-
By default, when Git does a merge, it uses a strategy called the
ort
strategy, which does a fancy three-way merge. In such a case, when Git
performs the merge, it considers exactly three points: the two heads and a
third point, called the merge base, which is usually the common ancestor of
those commits. Git does not consider the history or the individual commits
that have happened on those branches at all.As a result, if both sides have a change and one side has reverted that change,
the result is to include the change. This is because the code has changed on
one side and there is no net change on the other, and in this scenario, Git
adopts the change.If this is a problem for you, you can do a rebase instead, rebasing the branch
with the revert onto the other branch. A rebase in this scenario will revert
the change, because a rebase applies each individual commit, including the
revert. Note that rebases rewrite history, so you should avoid rebasing
published branches unless you’re sure you’re comfortable with that. See the
NOTES section in git-rebase[1] for more details.
Hooks
- How do I use hooks to prevent users from making certain changes?
-
The only safe place to make these changes is on the remote repository
(i.e., the Git server), usually in thepre-receive
hook or in a
continuous integration (CI) system. These are the locations in which
policy can be enforced effectively.It’s common to try to use
pre-commit
hooks (or, for commit messages,
commit-msg
hooks) to check these things, which is great if you’re working as a
solo developer and want the tooling to help you. However, using hooks on a
developer machine is not effective as a policy control because a user can bypass
these hooks with--no-verify
without being noticed (among various other ways).
Git assumes that the user is in control of their local repositories and doesn’t
try to prevent this or tattle on the user.In addition, some advanced users find
pre-commit
hooks to be an impediment to
workflows that use temporary commits to stage work in progress or that create
fixup commits, so it’s better to push these kinds of checks to the server
anyway.
Cross-Platform Issues
- I’m on Windows and my text files are detected as binary.
-
Git works best when you store text files as UTF-8. Many programs on
Windows support UTF-8, but some do not and only use the little-endian
UTF-16 format, which Git detects as binary. If you can’t use UTF-8 with
your programs, you can specify a working tree encoding that indicates
which encoding your files should be checked out with, while still
storing these files as UTF-8 in the repository. This allows tools like
git-diff[1] to work as expected, while still allowing your tools
to work.To do so, you can specify a gitattributes[5] pattern with the
working-tree-encoding
attribute. For example, the following pattern sets all
C files to use UTF-16LE-BOM, which is a common encoding on Windows:*.c working-tree-encoding=UTF-16LE-BOM
You will need to run
git add --renormalize
to have this take effect. Note
that if you are making these changes on a project that is used across platforms,
you’ll probably want to make it in a per-user configuration file or in the one
in$GIT_DIR/info/attributes
, since making it in a.gitattributes
file in the
repository will apply to all users of the repository.See the following entry for information about normalizing line endings as well,
and see gitattributes[5] for more information about attribute files.
- I’m on Windows and git diff shows my files as having a
^M
at the end. -
By default, Git expects files to be stored with Unix line endings. As such,
the carriage return (^M
) that is part of a Windows line ending is shown
because it is considered to be trailing whitespace. Git defaults to showing
trailing whitespace only on new lines, not existing ones.You can store the files in the repository with Unix line endings and convert
them automatically to your platform’s line endings. To do that, set the
configuration optioncore.eol
tonative
and see the following entry for
information about how to configure files as text or binary.You can also control this behavior with the
core.whitespace
setting if you
don’t wish to remove the carriage returns from your line endings.
- Why do I have a file that’s always modified?
-
Internally, Git always stores file names as sequences of bytes and doesn’t
perform any encoding or case folding. However, Windows and macOS by default
both perform case folding on file names. As a result, it’s possible to end up
with multiple files or directories whose names differ only in case. Git can
handle this just fine, but the file system can store only one of these files,
so when Git reads the other file to see its contents, it looks modified.It’s best to remove one of the files such that you only have one file. You can
do this with commands like the following (assuming two filesAFile.txt
and
afile.txt
) on an otherwise clean working tree:$ git rm --cached AFile.txt $ git commit -m 'Remove files conflicting in case' $ git checkout .
This avoids touching the disk, but removes the additional file. Your project
may prefer to adopt a naming convention, such as all-lowercase names, to avoid
this problem from occurring again; such a convention can be checked using a
pre-receive
hook or as part of a continuous integration (CI) system.It is also possible for perpetually modified files to occur on any platform if a
smudge or clean filter is in use on your system but a file was previously
committed without running the smudge or clean filter. To fix this, run the
following on an otherwise clean working tree:$ git add --renormalize .
- What’s the recommended way to store files in Git?
-
While Git can store and handle any file of any type, there are some
settings that work better than others. In general, we recommend that
text files be stored in UTF-8 without a byte-order mark (BOM) with LF
(Unix-style) endings. We also recommend the use of UTF-8 (again,
without BOM) in commit messages. These are the settings that work best
across platforms and with tools such asgit diff
andgit merge
.Additionally, if you have a choice between storage formats that are text based
or non-text based, we recommend storing files in the text format and, if
necessary, transforming them into the other format. For example, a text-based
SQL dump with one record per line will work much better for diffing and merging
than an actual database file. Similarly, text-based formats such as Markdown
and AsciiDoc will work better than binary formats such as Microsoft Word and
PDF.Similarly, storing binary dependencies (e.g., shared libraries or JAR files) or
build products in the repository is generally not recommended. Dependencies and
build products are best stored on an artifact or package server with only
references, URLs, and hashes stored in the repository.We also recommend setting a gitattributes[5] file to explicitly mark
which files are text and which are binary. If you want Git to guess, you can
set the attributetext=auto
. For example, the following might be appropriate
in some projects:# By default, guess. * text=auto # Mark all C files as text. *.c text # Mark all JPEG files as binary. *.jpg binary
These settings help tools pick the right format for output such as patches and
result in files being checked out in the appropriate line ending for the
platform.