Help and introspection (man, help, status, log)

Git offers built-in documentation that’s accessible through man or git commands, as well as the ability to make context-aware suggestions to help the user.

How to get help with a command

For help with git push, for example, you can do either:

man git-push

or

git help push

How to access built-in documentation

Glossary: man gitglossary
Tutorials: man gittutorial, man gittutorial-2
Workflows: man gitworkflows
Everyday Git: man giteveryday

How to ask Git for a hint about your current situation

git status can be used to view the local state of your repo and provide a hint for the next possible actions that could be taken.

git status

Example output:

On branch main
Your branch is behind 'origin/main' by 4 commits, and can be fast-forwarded.
  (use "git pull" to update your local branch)

nothing to commit, working tree clean

How to visualize the Git History

git log

The default display is long-form information about commits, but if you have lots of commits or want to view the branching structure of your history, you may want to try:

git log --graph --decorate --oneline  --all