SYNOPSIS

git cola [options] [sub-command]

DESCRIPTION

git cola is a sleek and powerful Git GUI.

OPTIONS

--amend

Start git cola in amend mode.

-g, --git-path <path>

Path to the git binary. Defaults to the git command found in $PATH.

--prompt

Prompt for a Git repository. Defaults to the current directory.

-r, --repo <path>

Open the Git repository at <path>. Defaults to the current directory.

-s, --status-filter <filter>

Apply the path filter to the status widget.

--version

Print the git cola version and exit.

-h, --help

Show usage and optional arguments.

--help-commands

Show available sub-commands.

SUB-COMMANDS

am

Apply patches.

archive

Export tarballs from Git.

branch

Create branches.

browse

Browse tracked files.

config

Configure settings.

dag

Start the git dag Git history browser.

diff

Diff changed files.

fetch

Fetch history from remote repositories.

grep

Use git grep to search for content.

merge

Merge branches.

pull

Fetch and merge remote branches.

push

Push branches to remotes.

rebase

Start an interactive rebase.

remote

Create and edit remotes.

search

Search for commits.

stash

Stash uncommitted modifications.

tag

Create tags.

version

Print the git cola version.

CONFIGURE YOUR EDITOR

The editor used by Ctrl-e is configured from the Preferences screen. The environment variable $VISUAL is consulted when no editor has been configured.

ProTip: Configuring your editor to gvim -f -p will open multiple tabs when editing files. gvim -f -o uses splits.

git cola is {vim, emacs, textpad, notepad++}-aware. When you select a line in the grep screen and press any of Enter, Ctrl-e, or the Edit button, you are taken to that exact line.

The editor preference is saved in the gui.editor variable using git config.

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

git cola has many useful keyboard shortcuts.

You can see the available shortcuts by pressing the ? key, choosing Help -> Keyboard shortcuts from the main menu, or by consulting the keyboard shortcuts reference.

TOOLS

The git cola interface is composed of various cooperating tools. Double-clicking a tool opens it in its own subwindow. Dragging it around moves and places it within the window.

Tools can be hidden and rearranged however you like. git cola carefully remembers your window layout and restores it the next time it is launched.

The Control-{1, 2, 3, ...} hotkey gives focus to a specific tool. A hidden tool can be re-opened using the Tools menu or the Shift+Control-{1, 2, 3, ...} shortcut keys.

STATUS

The Status tool provides a visual analog to the git status command.

Status displays files that are modified relative to the staging area, staged for the next commit, unmerged files from an in-progress merge, and files that are untracked to git.

These are the same categories one sees when running git status on the command line.

You can navigate through the list of files using keyboard arrows as well as the ergonomical and vim-like j and k shortcut keys.

There are several convenient ways to interact with files in the Status tool.

Selecting a file displays its diff in the DIFF viewer. Double-clicking a file stages its contents, as does the the Ctrl-s shortcut key.

Ctrl-e opens selected files in the conifgured editor, and Ctrl-d opens selected files using git difftool

Additional actions can be performed using the right-click context menu.

Actions

Clicking the Staged folder shows a diffstat for the index.

Clicking the Modified folder shows a diffstat for the worktree.

Clicking individual files sends diffs to the Diff Display.

Double-clicking individual files adds and removes their content from the index.

Various actions are available through the right-click context menu. Different actions are available depending a file's status.

Stage Selected

Add to the staging area using git add Marks unmerged files as resolved.

Launch Editor

Launches the configured visual text editor

Launch Difftool

Visualize changes using git difftool.

Revert Unstaged Edits

Reverts unstaged content by checking out selected paths from the index/staging area

Revert Uncommited Edits

Throws away uncommitted edits

Unstage Selected

Remove from the index/staging area with git reset

Launch Merge Tool

Resolve conflicts using git mergetool.

Delete File(s)

Delete untracked files from the filesystem.

Add to .gitignore

Adds untracked files to to the .gitignore file.

DIFF

The diff viewer/editor displays diffs for selected files. Additions are shown in green and removals are displayed in light red. Extraneous whitespace is shown with a pure-red background.

Right-clicking in the diff provides access to additional actions that use either the cursor location or text selection.

Staging content for commit

The @@ patterns denote a new diff hunk. Selecting lines of diff and using the Stage Selected Lines command will stage just the selected lines. Clicking within a diff hunk and selecting Stage Diff Hunk stages the entire patch diff hunk.

The corresponding opposite commands can be performed on staged files as well, e.g. staged content can be selectively removed from the index when we are viewing diffs for staged content.

COMMIT MESSAGE EDITOR

The commit message editor is a simple text widget for entering commit messages.

You can navigate between the Subject and Extended description... fields using the keyboard arrow keys.

Pressing enter when inside the Subject field jumps down to the extended description field.

The Options button menu to the left of the subject field provides access to the additional actions.

The Ctrl+i keyboard shortcut adds a standard "Signed-off-by: " line, and Ctrl+Enter creates a new commit using the commit message and staged content.

Sign Off

The Sign Off button adds a standard:

Signed-off-by: A. U. Thor <[email protected]>

line to the bottom of the commit message.

Invoking this action is equivalent to passing the -s option to git commit.

Commit

The commit button runs git commit. The contents of the commit message editor is provided as the commit message.

Only staged files are included in the commit -- this is the same behavior as running git commit on the command-line.

Line and Column Display

The current line and column number is displayed by the editor. E.g. a 5,0 display means that the cursor is located at line five, column zero.

The display changes colors when lines get too long. Yellow indicates the safe boundary for sending patches to a mailing list while keeping space for inline reply markers.

Orange indicates that the line is starting to run a bit long and should break soon.

Red indicates that the line is running up against the standard 80-column limit for commit messages.

Keeping commit messages less than 76-characters wide is encouraged. git log is a great tool but long lines mess up its formatting for everyone else, so please be mindful when writing commit messages.

Amend Last Commit

Clicking on Amend Last Commit makes git cola amend the previous commit instead of creating a new one. git cola loads the previous commit message into the commit message editor when this option is selected.

The Status tool will display all of the changes for the amended commit.

APPLY PATCHES

Use the File -> Apply Patches menu item to begin applying patches.

Dragging and dropping patches onto the git cola interface adds the patches to the list of patches to apply using git am.

You can drag either a set of patches or a directory containing patches. Patches can be sorted using in the interface and are applied in the same order as is listed in the list.

When a directory is dropped git cola walks the directory tree in search of patches. git cola sorts the list of patches after they have all been found. This allows you to control the order in which patchs are applied by placing patchsets into alphanumerically-sorted directories.

CUSTOM WINDOW SETTINGS

git cola remembers modifications to the layout and arrangement of tools within the git cola interface. Changes are saved and restored at application shutdown/startup.

git cola can be configured to not save custom layouts by unsetting the Save Window Settings option in the git cola preferences.

CONFIGURATION VARIABLES

These variables can be set using git config or from the settings.

cola.savewindowsettings

git cola will remember its window settings when set to true. Window settings and X11 sessions are saved in $HOME/.config/git-cola.

cola.fileattributes

Enables per-file gitattributes encoding support when set to true. This tells git cola to honor the configured encoding when displaying and applying diffs.

cola.fontdiff

Specifies the font to use for git cola's diff display.

cola.browserdockable

Whether to create a dock widget with the Browser tool. Defaults to false to speedup startup time.

cola.inotify

Set to false to disable inotify support. Defaults to true when the pyinotify module is available.

cola.linebreak

Whether to automatically break long lines while editing commit messages. Defaults to true. This setting is configured using the Preferences dialog, but it can be toggled for one-off usage using the commit message editor's options sub-menu.

cola.tabwidth

The number of columns occupied by a tab character. Defaults to 8.

cola.textwidth

The number of columns used for line wrapping. Tabs are counted according to cola.tabwidth.

cola.readsize

git cola avoids reading large binary untracked files. The maximum size to read is controlled by cola.readsize and defaults to 2048.

gui.diffcontext

The number of diff context lines to display.

gui.displayuntracked

git cola avoids showing untracked files when set to false.

gui.editor

The default text editor to use is defined in gui.editor. The config variable overrides the VISUAL environment variable. e.g. gvim -f -p.

gui.historybrowser

The history browser to use when visualizing history. Defaults to gitk.

diff.tool

The default diff tool to use.

merge.tool

The default merge tool to use.

user.email

Your email address to be recorded in any newly created commits. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL', 'GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL', and 'EMAIL' environment variables.

user.name

Your full name to be recorded in any newly created commits. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_AUTHOR_NAME' and 'GIT_COMMITTER_NAME' environment variables.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

GIT_COLA_TRACE

When defined, git cola logs git commands to stdout. When set to full, git cola also logs the exit status and output. When set to trace, git cola logs to the Console widget.

VISUAL

Specifies the default editor to use. This is ignored when the gui.editor configuration variable is defined.

LANGUAGE SETTINGS

git cola automatically detects your language and presents some translations when available. This may not be desired, or you may want git cola to use a specific language.

You can make git cola use an alternative language by creating a ~/.config/git-cola/language file containing the standard two-letter gettext language code, e.g. "en", "de", "ja", "zh", etc.:

mkdir -p ~/.config/git-cola &&
echo en >~/.config/git-cola/language

Alternatively you may also use LANGAUGE environmental variable to temporarily change git cola's language just like any other gettext-based program. For example to temporarily change git cola's language to English:

LANGUAGE=en git cola

To make git cola use the zh_TW translation with zh_HK, zh, and en as a fallback.:

LANGUAGE=zh_TW:zh_HK:zh:en git cola

CUSTOM GUI ACTIONS

git cola allows you to define custom GUI actions by setting git config variables. The "name" of the command appears in the "Actions" menu.

guitool.<name>.cmd

Specifies the shell command line to execute when the corresponding item of the Tools menu is invoked. This option is mandatory for every tool. The command is executed from the root of the working directory, and in the environment it receives the name of the tool as GIT_GUITOOL, the name of the currently selected file as FILENAME, and the name of the current branch as CUR_BRANCH (if the head is detached, CUR_BRANCH is empty).

guitool.<name>.background

Run the command in the background (similar to editing and difftool actions). This avoids blocking the GUI. Setting background to true implies noconsole and norescan.

guitool.<name>.needsfile

Run the tool only if a diff is selected in the GUI. It guarantees that FILENAME is not empty.

guitool.<name>.noconsole

Run the command silently, without creating a window to display its output.

guitool.<name>.norescan

Don’t rescan the working directory for changes after the tool finishes execution.

guitool.<name>.confirm

Show a confirmation dialog before actually running the tool.

guitool.<name>.argprompt

Request a string argument from the user, and pass it to the tool through the ARGS environment variable. Since requesting an argument implies confirmation, the confirm option has no effect if this is enabled. If the option is set to true, yes, or 1, the dialog uses a built-in generic prompt; otherwise the exact value of the variable is used.

guitool.<name>.revprompt

Request a single valid revision from the user, and set the REVISION environment variable. In other aspects this option is similar to argprompt, and can be used together with it.

guitool.<name>.revunmerged

Show only unmerged branches in the revprompt subdialog. This is useful for tools similar to merge or rebase, but not for things like checkout or reset.

guitool.<name>.title

Specifies the title to use for the prompt dialog. Defaults to the tool name.

guitool.<name>.prompt

Specifies the general prompt string to display at the top of the dialog, before subsections for argprompt and revprompt. The default value includes the actual command.

LINKS

Git Cola's Git Repository

https://github.com/git-cola/git-cola/

Git Cola Homepage

http://git-cola.github.io/

Mailing List

https://groups.google.com/group/git-cola

AUTHOR

David Aguilar and contributors

COPYRIGHT

2007-2014, David Aguilar and contributors