GitHub Cheat Sheet

A collection of cool hidden and not so hidden features of Git and GitHub. This cheat sheet was inspired by Zach Holman's Git and GitHub Secrets talk at Aloha Ruby Conference 2012 (slides) and his More Git and GitHub Secrets talk at WDCNZ 2013 (slides).

Shortlink: http://git.io/sheet

Read this in other languages: English, 한국어, 日本語, 简体中文, 正體中文.

GitHub Cheat Sheet is sponsored by Snapshot: create interactive professional-quality product photos using AI

Table of Contents

• GitHub
  • Ignore Whitespace
  • Adjust Tab Space
  • Commit History by Author
  • Cloning a Repository
  • Branch
    • Compare all Branches to Another Branch
    • Comparing Branches
    • Compare Branches across Forked Repositories
  • Gists
  • Git.io
  • Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Line Highlighting in Repositories
  • Closing Issues via Commit Messages
  • Cross-Link Issues
  • Locking Conversations
  • CI Status on Pull Requests
  • Filters
  • Syntax Highlighting in Markdown Files
  • Emojis
  • Images/GIFs
    • Embedding Images in GitHub Wiki
  • Quick Quoting
  • Pasting Clipboard Image to Comments
  • Quick Licensing
  • Task Lists
    • Task Lists in Markdown Documents
  • Relative Links
  • Metadata and Plugin Support for GitHub Pages
  • Viewing YAML Metadata in your Documents
  • Rendering Tabular Data
  • Rendering PDF
  • Revert a Pull Request
  • Diffs
    • Rendered Prose Diffs
    • Diffable Maps
    • Expanding Context in Diffs
    • Diff or Patch of Pull Request
    • Rendering and diffing images
  • Hub
  • Contribution Guidelines
    • CONTRIBUTING file
    • ISSUE_TEMPLATE file
    • PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE file
  • Octicons
  • GitHub Student Developer Pack
  • GitHub Resources
    • GitHub Talks
  • SSH keys
  • Profile Image
  • Repository Templates
• Git
  • Remove All Deleted Files from the Working Tree
  • Previous Branch
  • Stripspace
  • Checking out Pull Requests
  • Empty Commits
  • Styled Git Status
  • Styled Git Log
  • Git Query
  • Git Grep
  • Merged Branches
  • Fixup and Autosquash
  • Web Server for Browsing Local Repositories
  • Git Configurations
    • Aliases
    • Auto-Correct
    • Color
  • Git Resources
    • Git Books
    • Git Videos
    • Git Articles

GitHub

Ignore Whitespace

Adding ?w=1 to any diff URL will remove any changes only in whitespace, enabling you to see only the code that has changed.

Read more about GitHub secrets.

Adjust Tab Space

Adding ?ts=4 to a diff or file URL will display tab characters as 4 spaces wide instead of the default 8. The number after ts can be adjusted to suit your preference. This does not work on Gists, or raw file views, but a Chrome extension can automate this.

Here is a Go source file before adding ?ts=4:

...and this is after adding ?ts=4:

Commit History by Author

To view all commits on a repo by author add ?author={user} to the URL.

https://github.com/rails/rails/commits/master?author=dhh

Read more about the differences between commits views.

Cloning a Repository

When cloning a repository the .git can be left off the end.

$ git clone https://github.com/tiimgreen/github-cheat-sheet

Read more about the Git clone command.

Branch

Compare all Branches to Another Branch

If you go to the repo's Branches page, next to the Commits button:

https://github.com/{user}/{repo}/branches

... you would see a list of all branches which are not merged into the main branch.

From here you can access the compare page or delete a branch with a click of a button.

Comparing Branches

To use GitHub to compare branches, change the URL to look like this:

https://github.com/{user}/{repo}/compare/{range}

where {range} = master...4-1-stable

For example:

https://github.com/rails/rails/compare/master...4-1-stable

{range} can be changed to things like:

https://github.com/rails/rails/compare/master@{1.day.ago}...master
https://github.com/rails/rails/compare/master@{2014-10-04}...master

Here, dates are in the format YYYY-MM-DD

Branches can also be compared in diff and patch views:

https://github.com/rails/rails/compare/master...4-1-stable.diff
https://github.com/rails/rails/compare/master...4-1-stable.patch

Read more about comparing commits across time.

Compare Branches across Forked Repositories

To use GitHub to compare branches across forked repositories, change the URL to look like this:

https://github.com/{user}/{repo}/compare/{foreign-user}:{branch}...{own-branch}

For example:

https://github.com/rails/rails/compare/byroot:master...master

Gists

Gists are an easy way to work with small bits of code without creating a fully fledged repository.

Add .pibb to the end of any Gist URL (like this) in order to get the HTML-only version suitable for embedding in any other site.

Gists can be treated as a repository so they can be cloned like any other:

$ git clone https://gist.github.com/tiimgreen/10545817

This means you also can modify and push updates to Gists:

$ git commit
$ git push
Username for 'https://gist.github.com':
Password for 'https://tiimgreen@gist.github.com':

However, Gists do not support directories. All files need to be added to the repository root. Read more about creating Gists.

Git.io

Git.io is a simple URL shortener for GitHub.

You can also use it via pure HTTP using Curl:

$ curl -i http://git.io -F "url=https://github.com/..."
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Location: http://git.io/abc123

$ curl -i http://git.io/abc123
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Location: https://github.com/...

Read more about Git.io.

Keyboard Shortcuts

When on a repository page, keyboard shortcuts allow you to navigate easily.

• Pressing t will bring up a file explorer.
• Pressing w will bring up the branch selector.
• Pressing s will focus the search field for the current repository. Pressing ↓ to select the “All GitHub” option changes the field to search all of GitHub.
• Pressing l will edit labels on existing Issues.
• Pressing y when looking at a file (e.g., https://github.com/tiimgreen/github-cheat-sheet/blob/master/README.md) will change your URL to one which, in effect, freezes the page you are looking at. If this code changes, you will still be able to see what you saw at that current time.

To see all of the shortcuts for the current page press ?:

Read more about search syntax you can use.

Line Highlighting in Repositories

Either adding, e.g., #L52 to the end of a code file URL or simply clicking the line number will highlight that line number.

It also works with ranges, e.g., #L53-L60, to select ranges, hold shift and click two lines:

https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activemodel/lib/active_model.rb#L53-L60

Closing Issues via Commit Messages

If a particular commit fixes an issue, any of the keywords fix/fixes/fixed, close/closes/closed or resolve/resolves/resolved, followed by the issue number, will close the issue once it is committed to the repository's default branch.

$ git commit -m "Fix screwup, fixes #12"

This closes the issue and references the closing commit.

Read more about closing Issues via commit messages.

Cross-Link Issues

If you want to link to another issue in the same repository, simply type hash # then the issue number, and it will be auto-linked.

To link to an issue in another repository, {user}/{repo}#ISSUE_NUMBER, e.g., tiimgreen/toc#12.

Locking Conversations

Pull Requests and Issues can now be locked by owners or collaborators of the repo.

This means that users who are not collaborators on the project will no longer be able to comment.

Read more about locking conversations.

CI Status on Pull Requests

If set up correctly, every time you receive a Pull Request, Travis CI will build that Pull Request just like it would every time you make a new commit. Read more about how to get started with Travis CI.

Read more about the commit status API.

Filters

Both issues and pull requests allow filtering in the user interface.

For the Rails repo: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues, the following filter is built by selecting the label "activerecord":

is:issue label:activerecord

But, you can also find all issues that are NOT labeled activerecord:

is:issue -label:activerecord

Additionally, this also works for pull requests:

is:pr -label:activerecord

Github has tabs for displaying open or closed issues and pull requests but you can also see merged pull requests. Just put the following in the filter:

is:merged

Read more about searching issues.

Finally, github now allows you to filter by the Status API's status.

Pull requests with only successful statuses:

status:success

Read more about searching on the Status API.

Syntax Highlighting in Markdown Files

For example, to syntax highlight Ruby code in your Markdown files write:

```ruby
require 'tabbit'
table = Tabbit.new('Name', 'Email')
table.add_row('Tim Green', 'tiimgreen@gmail.com')
puts table.to_s
```

This will produce:

require 'tabbit'
table = Tabbit.new('Name', 'Email')
table.add_row('Tim Green', 'tiimgreen@gmail.com')
puts table.to_s

GitHub uses Linguist to perform language detection and syntax highlighting. You can find out which keywords are valid by perusing the [languages YAML