1. 1. Getting Started

   1. 1.1 About Version Control
   2. 1.2 A Short History of Git
   3. 1.3 What is Git?
   4. 1.4 The Command Line
   5. 1.5 Installing Git
   6. 1.6 First-Time Git Setup
   7. 1.7 Getting Help
   8. 1.8 Summary

2. 2. Git Basics

   1. 2.1 Getting a Git Repository
   2. 2.2 Recording Changes to the Repository
   3. 2.3 Viewing the Commit History
   4. 2.4 Undoing Things
   5. 2.5 Working with Remotes
   6. 2.6 Tagging
   7. 2.7 Git Aliases
   8. 2.8 Summary

3. 3. Git Branching

   1. 3.1 Branches in a Nutshell
   2. 3.2 Basic Branching and Merging
   3. 3.3 Branch Management
   4. 3.4 Branching Workflows
   5. 3.5 Remote Branches
   6. 3.6 Rebasing
   7. 3.7 Summary

4. 4. Git on the Server

   1. 4.1 The Protocols
   2. 4.2 Getting Git on a Server
   3. 4.3 Generating Your SSH Public Key
   4. 4.4 Setting Up the Server
   5. 4.5 Git Daemon
   6. 4.6 Smart HTTP
   7. 4.7 GitWeb
   8. 4.8 GitLab
   9. 4.9 Third Party Hosted Options
   10. 4.10 Summary

5. 5. Distributed Git

   1. 5.1 Distributed Workflows
   2. 5.2 Contributing to a Project
   3. 5.3 Maintaining a Project
   4. 5.4 Summary

1. 6. GitHub

   1. 6.1 Account Setup and Configuration
   2. 6.2 Contributing to a Project
   3. 6.3 Maintaining a Project
   4. 6.4 Managing an organization
   5. 6.5 Scripting GitHub
   6. 6.6 Summary

2. 7. Git Tools

   1. 7.1 Revision Selection
   2. 7.2 Interactive Staging
   3. 7.3 Stashing and Cleaning
   4. 7.4 Signing Your Work
   5. 7.5 Searching
   6. 7.6 Rewriting History
   7. 7.7 Reset Demystified
   8. 7.8 Advanced Merging
   9. 7.9 Rerere
   10. 7.10 Debugging with Git
   11. 7.11 Submodules
   12. 7.12 Bundling
   13. 7.13 Replace
   14. 7.14 Credential Storage
   15. 7.15 Summary

3. 8. Customizing Git

   1. 8.1 Git Configuration
   2. 8.2 Git Attributes
   3. 8.3 Git Hooks
   4. 8.4 An Example Git-Enforced Policy
   5. 8.5 Summary

4. 9. Git and Other Systems

   1. 9.1 Git as a Client
   2. 9.2 Migrating to Git
   3. 9.3 Summary

5. 10. Git Internals

   1. 10.1 Plumbing and Porcelain
   2. 10.2 Git Objects
   3. 10.3 Git References
   4. 10.4 Packfiles
   5. 10.5 The Refspec
   6. 10.6 Transfer Protocols
   7. 10.7 Maintenance and Data Recovery
   8. 10.8 Environment Variables
   9. 10.9 Summary

1. A1. Appendix A: Git in Other Environments

   1. A1.1 Graphical Interfaces
   2. A1.2 Git in Visual Studio
   3. A1.3 Git in Visual Studio Code
   4. A1.4 Git in IntelliJ / PyCharm / WebStorm / PhpStorm / RubyMine
   5. A1.5 Git in Sublime Text
   6. A1.6 Git in Bash
   7. A1.7 Git in Zsh
   8. A1.8 Git in PowerShell
   9. A1.9 Summary

2. A2. Appendix B: Embedding Git in your Applications

   1. A2.1 Command-line Git
   2. A2.2 Libgit2
   3. A2.3 JGit
   4. A2.4 go-git
   5. A2.5 Dulwich

3. A3. Appendix C: Git Commands

   1. A3.1 Setup and Config
   2. A3.2 Getting and Creating Projects
   3. A3.3 Basic Snapshotting
   4. A3.4 Branching and Merging
   5. A3.5 Sharing and Updating Projects
   6. A3.6 Inspection and Comparison
   7. A3.7 Debugging
   8. A3.8 Patching
   9. A3.9 Email
   10. A3.10 External Systems
   11. A3.11 Administration
   12. A3.12 Plumbing Commands

The git show command can show a Git object in a simple and human readable way. Normally you would use this to show the information about a tag or a commit.

We first use it to show annotated tag information in Annotated Tags.

Later we use it quite a bit in Revision Selection to show the commits that our various revision selections resolve to.

One of the more interesting things we do with git show is in Manual File Re-merging to extract specific file contents of various stages during a merge conflict.

The git shortlog command is used to summarize the output of git log. It will take many of the same options that the git log command will but instead of listing out all of the commits it will present a summary of the commits grouped by author.

We showed how to use it to create a nice changelog in The Shortlog.

The git describe command is used to take anything that resolves to a commit and produces a string that is somewhat human-readable and will not change. It’s a way to get a description of a commit that is as unambiguous as a commit SHA-1 but more understandable.

We use git describe in Generating a Build Number and Preparing a Release to get a string to name our release file after.