Advanced Git Commands

Let’s explore more powerful commands that help with advanced workflows and recovery operations.

📦 Temporarily Save Changes: `git stash`

Use when you want to switch branches but aren’t ready to commit changes.

git stash

Reapply stashed changes:

git stash apply

List stashes:

git stash list

Drop a stash:

git stash drop stash@{0}

🔍 Recover Lost Commits: `git reflog`

Shows a log of where HEAD and branches have moved — useful for recovery!

git reflog

You can reset to a previous state using the hash:

git reset --hard <reflog_hash>

🧹 Clean Untracked Files: `git clean`

⚠️ Be careful! Deletes untracked files.

Dry run (see what will be deleted):

git clean -n

Actually delete:

git clean -f

📥 Fetch & Pull from Remote

Download new commits and branches without merging:

git fetch

Fetch + merge = pull:

git pull

Use git pull --rebase to rebase instead of merge.

🚀 Push to Remote Repository

Push current branch to `origin`:

git push

Push to a specific branch:

git push origin branch-name

🏷️ Git Tags (Mark a Commit)

Tag a commit (e.g. for releases):

git tag v1.0

Push tags to remote:

git push origin --tags

List all tags:

git tag

🍒 Cherry-Pick Commits

Copy a single commit from one branch to another:

git cherry-pick <commit_hash>

Use this if you want to bring in one feature without merging the whole branch.

📂 Rename a File

git mv old_name.txt new_name.txt

Then commit:

git commit -m "Renamed file"

🔍 Blame for a Line of Code

See who last modified each line of a file:

git blame filename.py

🧪 Try It Yourself

Problem: Stash Changes and Switch Branches

Show Code

git stash
git checkout other-branch
# work here
git checkout main
git stash apply

Problem: Clean Untracked Files