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Combining git navigation commands

Published on 2018-09-01 code

Heres a quick git tip:

Everyone who uses git probably knows the commands git checkout and git reset. But for a long time, I did not really know what exactly they do.

The key is understanding that there are three different aspects of your git repo that can change: If you do a git checkout <branch>, the branch will change, but the head and working tree will change along with it. On the other hand, if you do a git reset <branch>, only the head will change. And then there is the option to do git reset --hard <branch>, which is just like the regular reset, except that it also changes the working tree.

By combining these basic commands, you can achieve any state you want. Here is a full table:

branch head working tree
- A A A
git reset --hard $B && git reset HEAD@{1} A A B
git reset $B A B A
git reset --hard $B A B B
git checkout $B && git reset --hard HEAD@{1} B A A
git checkout $B && git reset HEAD@{1} B A B
git checkout $B && git reset --hard HEAD@{1} && git reset HEAD@{1} B B A
git checkout $B B B B