Master GIT interview questions and answers with this comprehensive guide! Here are top 40+ Git interview questions and answers for freshers as well as experienced candidates to get their dream job.
GIT is a distributed version control system and source code management (SCM) system with an emphasis to handle small and large projects with speed and efficiency.
A repository contains a directory named .git, where git keeps all of its metadata for the repository. The content of the .git directory are private to git.
The command that is used to write a commit message is “git commit –a”. The –a on the command line instructs git to commit the new content of all tracked files that have been modified. You can use “git add<file>” before git commit –a if new files need to be committed for the first time.
The difference between GIT and SVN is
a) Git is less preferred for handling extremely large files or frequently changing binary files while SVN can handle multiple projects stored in the same repository.
b) GIT does not support ‘commits’ across multiple branches or tags. Subversion allows the creation of folders at any location in the repository layout.
c) Gits are unchangeable, while Subversion allows committers to treat a tag as a branch and to create multiple revisions under a tag root.
a) Data redundancy and replication
b) High availability
c) Only one.git directory per repository
d) Superior disk utilization and network performance
e) Collaboration friendly
f) Any sort of projects can use GIT
GIT is fast, and ‘C’ language makes this possible by reducing the overhead of runtimes associated with higher languages.
‘GIT PUSH’ updates remote refs along with associated objects.
GIT is an open source version control system; it will allow you to run ‘versions’ of a project, which show the changes that were made to the code overtime also it allows you keep the backtrack if necessary and undo those changes. Multiple developers can checkout, and upload changes and each change can then be attributed to a specific developer.
Before completing the commits, it can be formatted and reviewed in an intermediate area known as ‘Staging Area’ or ‘Index’.
GIT stash takes the current state of the working directory and index and puts in on the stack for later and gives you back a clean working directory. So in case if you are in the middle of something and need to jump over to the other job, and at the same time you don’t want to lose your current edits then you can use GIT stash.
When you are done with the stashed item or want to remove it from the list, run the git ‘stash drop’ command. It will remove the last added stash item by default, and it can also remove a specific item if you include as an argument.
Git branch—merged lists the branches that have been merged into the current branch
Git branch—-no merged lists the branches that have not been merged
The git clone command creates a copy of an existing Git repository. To get the copy of a central repository, ‘cloning’ is the most common way used by programmers.
The ‘git config’ command is a convenient way to set configuration options for your Git installation. Behaviour of a repository, user info, preferences etc. can be defined through this command.
a) A set of files, representing the state of a project at a given point of time
b) Reference to parent commit objects
c) An SHAI name, a 40 character string that uniquely identifies the commit object.
In Git, to create a repository, create a directory for the project if it does not exist, and then run command “git init”. By running this command .git directory will be created in the project directory, the directory does not need to be empty.
A ‘head’ is simply a reference to a commit object. In every repository, there is a default head referred as “Master”. A repository can contain any number of heads.
The purpose of branching in GIT is that you can create your own branch and jump between those branches. It will allow you to go to your previous work keeping your recent work intact.
The common way of creating branch in GIT is to maintain one as “Main“
branch and create another branch to implement new features. This pattern is particularly useful when there are multiple developers working on a single project.
To bring a new feature in the main branch, you can use a command “git merge” or “git pull command”.
A ‘conflict’ arises when the commit that has to be merged has some change in one place, and the current commit also has a change at the same place. Git will not be able to predict which change should take precedence.
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 merger, so it sets the parents of the commit correctly.
Once your development branch is merged into the main branch, you don’t need
development branch. To delete a branch use, the command “git branch –d [head]”.
“Rebasing” is an alternative to merging in git.
The syntax used for rebase is “git rebase [new-commit]
“
‘git remote add’ just creates an entry in your git config that specifies a name for a particular URL. While, ‘git clone’ creates a new git repository by copying and existing one located at the URI.
With the help of GIT version control, you can track the history of a collection of files and includes the functionality to revert the collection of files to another version. Each version captures a snapshot of the file system at a certain point of time. A collection of files and their complete history are stored in a repository.
Some of the best GIT client for LINUX is
a) Git Cola
b) Git-g
c) Smart git
d) Giggle
e) Git GUI
f) qGit
‘Subgit’ is a tool for a smooth, stress-free SVN to Git migration. Subgit is a solution for a company -wide migration from SVN to Git that is:
a) It is much better than git-svn
b) No requirement to change the infrastructure that is already placed
c) Allows to use all git and all sub-version features
d) Provides genuine stress –free migration experience.
‘git diff ’ shows the changes between commits, commit and working tree etc.
As ‘Git Status’ shows you the difference between the working directory and the index, it is helpful in understanding a git more comprehensively.
‘git diff’ is similar to ‘git status’, but it shows the differences between various commits and also between the working directory and index.
A ‘git checkout’ command is used to update directories or specific files in your working tree with those from another branch without merging it in the whole branch.
To remove the file from the staging area and also off your disk ‘git rm’ is used.
When you want to continue working where you have left your work, ‘git stash apply’ command is used to bring back the saved changes onto the working directory.
To find specific commits in your project history- by author, date, content or history ‘git log’ is used.
‘git add’ adds file changes in your existing directory to your index.
The function of ‘Git Reset’ is to reset your index as well as the working directory to the state of your last commit.
‘git Is-tree’ represents a tree object including the mode and the name of each item and the SHA-1 value of the blob or the tree.
‘Git Instaweb’ automatically directs a web browser and runs webserver with an interface into your local repository.
This directory consists of Shell scripts which are activated after running the corresponding Git commands. For example, git will try to execute the post-commit script after you run a commit.
Commit message is a feature of git which appears when you commit a change. Git provides you a text editor where you can enter the modifications made in commits.
To fix any broken commit, you will use the command “git commit—amend”. By running this command, you can fix the broken commit message in the editor.
There are couple of reason
a) The amend operation will destroy the state that was previously saved in a commit. If it’s just the commit message being changed then that’s not an issue. But if the contents are being amended then chances of eliminating something important remains more.
b) Abusing “git commit- amend” can cause a small commit to grow and acquire unrelated changes.
To co-ordinate with the distributed development and developers team, especially when you are working on a project from multiple computers ‘Bare Repository’ is used. A bare repository comprises of a version history of your code.
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