Git Commands You Probably Do Not Need

submited by

Style Pass

2023-01-23 10:30:05

Ah, git! Love it, hate it. Few things are as central to the modern software development workflow as source-control management (SCM) tools. Although there have been and still are plenty of alternatives to git in the world of SCMs, none other seem quite as prevalent both in open-source and the enterprise.

Regardless of how central git has grown to be for many (most?) software developers, I frequently get the impression that people have a tendency to shy away from anything beyond the relatively basic functionality it provides.

Since its very inception git has been notorious for its often unfriendly, inconsistent and occasionally hostile command line interface:

In this post I’ll present a few git commands and operations I run or have run on occasion, in no particular order, that the majority of git users out there might not ever need.

git is designed to track content and changes to that content over time, so creating empty commits doesn’t sound like a very productive or sensible thing to do. Not adding any content might seem like a waste.