Notes on git

These are my notes on git — the stupid content tracker. I am using git mostly to keep local Linux kernel sources. Here are the tasks that I normally need.

Checkout

To get Linus' tree:

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git linux-2.6

To get another fork and use Linus' tree as a baseline to reduce traffic:

git clone --reference linux-2.6 git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-2.6.18.y linux-2.6.18.y

Update

To get the latest changes from the kernel maintainers:

git pull
git fetch --tags

To revert to the clean copy:

git reset --hard HEAD
git clean

List tags and branches

git tag -l
git branch

Local branches

Create local branch from tag. Useful to make a release:

git checkout -b <branch> <tag>

To switch between branches:

git checkout <branch>

To delete a branch

git branch -d <branch>

Release

Creating a tarball

git archive --format=tar --prefix=linux-2.6.20/ v2.6.20 | gzip >linux-2.6.20.tar.gz

Releasing to a directory

git archive --format=tar --prefix=linux-2.6.20/ v2.6.20 | (cd /usr/src && tar xf -)

Diffing

Create diff between tags:

git diff v2.6.18.1..v2.6.18.2 > patch.diff