🧰 Useful Git commands

🔗 Init & Update Submodules

Useful for complex projects using submodules.

git submodule update --init --recursive

• Clones all configured submodules.
• Checks them out to the commit stored in the parent repository.

✅ Additional Submodule Commands

# Add a submodule
git submodule add <repository-url> [<path>]

# Pull new commits in submodules
git submodule update --remote

# Remove a submodule (manual cleanup required)
git submodule deinit -f <path>
rm -rf .git/modules/<path>
git rm -f <path>

👤 Change the Author of Every Commit

When you've used the wrong Git user/email across all commits.

git rebase -r --root --exec "git commit --amend --no-edit --reset-author"

• Rewrites entire history and sets author to current Git config.
• Make sure you've updated your author beforehand:

git config user.name "Your Name"
git config user.email "you@example.com"

💡 Consider using conditional Git config for personal vs. work projects.

🪢 Enable Symlinks on Windows

When symlinks appear as plaintext files, enable this config:

git config --local core.symlinks true
git reset --hard HEAD

• Re-enables symlink behavior locally.
• ⚠️ Warning: git reset --hard will delete untracked files. Make sure the working directory is clean.

🔄 Reset & Clean Working Directory

git reset --hard
git clean -fd

• Discards all changes (tracked + untracked).
• Use when you want a truly clean slate.

🔍 Search Commit History

git log -S'search-term'

• Shows commits that added/removed the specified string.

git log -G'regex-pattern'

• Shows commits that match the regex pattern in diffs.

🧪 Dry Run Push or Clean

git push --dry-run
git clean -fdn

• Shows what would happen without actually performing the command.

🧭 Bisect to Find a Bug

Use binary search on commit history to find where a bug was introduced.

🔹 Basic Workflow

git bisect start
git bisect bad                # current commit has the bug
git bisect good <commit>     # known good commit (e.g., a tag or old hash)

# Git now checks out commits in-between. Test and mark each as:
git bisect good
# or
git bisect bad

# When finished
git bisect reset

• Efficiently narrows down the first bad commit.
• Useful when you don't know which commit introduced the bug.
• Useful when you have a large number of commits between releases.

💡 You can automate the process with a script:

git bisect run ./test-script.sh