13 Essential Git Interview Questions

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13 flashcards · Programming Languages · by lakesare

How do you revert a commit that has already been pushed and made public?
One or more commits can be reverted through the use of git revert. This command, in essence, creates a new commit with patches that cancel out the changes introduced in specific commits. In case the commit that needs to be reverted has already been published or changing the repository history is not an option, git revert can be used to revert commits. Running the following command will revert the last two commits: git revert HEAD~2..HEAD Alternatively, one can always checkout the state of a par…
How do you squash last N commits into a single commit?
Squashing multiple commits into a single commit will overwrite history, and should be done with caution. However, this is useful when working in feature branches. To squash the last N commits of the current branch, run the following command (with {N} replaced with the number of commits that you want to squash): git rebase -i HEAD~{N} Upon running this command, an editor will open with a list of these N commit messages, one per line. Each of these lines will begin with the word “pick”. Replacing…
How do you find a list of files that has changed in a particular commit?
git diff-tree -r {hash} Given the commit hash, this will list all the files that were changed or added in that commit. The -r flag makes the command list individual files, rather than collapsing them into root directory names only. The output will also include some extra information, which can be easily suppressed by including a couple of flags: git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r {hash} Here --no-commit-id will supress the commit hashes from appearing in the output, and --name-only wil…
How do you setup a script to run every time a repository receives new commits through push?
To configure a script to run every time a repository receives new commits through push, one needs to define either a pre-receive, update, or a post-receive hook depending on when exactly the script needs to be triggered. Pre-receive hook in the destination repository is invoked when commits are pushed to it. Any script bound to this hook will be executed before any references are updated. This is a useful hook to run scripts that help enforce development policies. Update hook works in a similar…
What is git bisect? How can you use it to determine the source of a (regression) bug?
Git provides a rather efficient mechanism to find bad commits. Instead of making the user try out every single commit to find out the first one that introduced some particular issue into the code, git bisect allows the user to perform a sort of binary search on the entire history of a repository. By issuing the command git bisect start, the repository enters bisect mode. After this, all you have to do is identify a bad and a good commit: git bisect bad # marks the current version as bad git bis…
What are the different ways you can refer to a commit?
In Git each commit is given a unique hash. These hashes can be used to identify the corresponding commits in various scenarios (such as while trying to checkout a particular state of the code using the git checkout {hash} command). Additionally, Git also maintains a number of aliases to certain commits, known as refs. Also, every tag that you create in the repository effectively becomes a ref (and that is exactly why you can use tags instead of commit hashes in various git commands). Git also m…
What is git rebase and how can it be used to resolve conflicts in a feature branch before merge?
In simple words, git rebase allows one to move the first commit of a branch to a new starting location. For example, if a feature branch was created from master, and since then the master branch has received new commits, git rebase can be used to move the feature branch to the tip of master. The command effectively will replay the changes made in the feature branch at the tip of master, allowing conflicts to be resolved in the process. When done with care, this will allow the feature branch to…
How do you configure a Git repository to run code sanity checking tools right before making commits, and preventing them if the test fails?
This can be done with a simple script bound to the pre-commit hook of the repository. The pre-commit hook is triggered right before a commit is made, even before you are required to enter a commit message. In this script one can run other tools, such as linters and perform sanity checks on the changes being committed into the repository. For example, the following script: #!/bin/sh files=$(git diff --cached --name-only --diff-filter=ACM | grep '.go$') if [ -z files ]; then exit 0 fi unfmtd=$(go…
One of your teammates accidentally deleted a branch, and has already pushed the changes to the central git repo. There are no other git repos, and none of your other teammates had a local copy. How would you recover this branch?
Check out the latest commit to this branch in the reflog, and then check it out as a new branch.
How can you copy a commit made in one branch to another (e.g. a hot fix commit from released branch to current development branch)?
You need to use the cherry-pick command. It provides the possibility to play back an existing commit to your current location/branch. So you need to switch to the target branch (e.g. git checkout development) and callgit cherry-pick {hash of that commit}. In spite of applying the same changes, it will be a new commit with a new hash because the changes are applied to a different destination.
How do you cherry-pick a merge commit?
Cherry-pick uses a diff to find the difference between branches. As a merge commit belongs to a different branch, it has two parents and two changesets. For example, if you have merge commt ref 63ad84c, you have to specify -m and use parent 1 as a base: git checkout release_branch git cherry-pick -m 1 63ad84c
What is the difference between git pull and git fetch?
git fetch only downloads new data from a remote repository, but it doesn’t integrate any of the downloaded data into your working files. All it does is provide a view of this data. git pull downloads as well as merges the data from a remote repository into your local working files. It may also lead to merge conflicts if your local changes are not yet committed. Use the git stash command to hide your local changes.
What is a conflict in git and how can it be resolved?
A conflict arises when more than one commit that has to be merged has some change in the same place or same line of code. Git will not be able to predict which change should take precedence. This is a git conflict. To resolve the conflict in git, edit the files to fix the conflicting changes and then add the resolved files by running git add. After that, to commit the repaired merge, run git commit. Git remembers that you are in the middle of a merge, so it sets the parents of the commit correc…