Git Interview Questions

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Contents

Basic GIT Interview Questions

1.   What is a version control system (VCS)?
2.   What is a git repository?
3.   What does git clone do?
4.   What does the command git config do?
5.   Can you explain head in terms of git and also tell the number of heads that can be
present in a repository?
6.   What is a conflict?
7.   What is the functionality of git ls-tree?
8.   What does git status command do?
9.   Define “Index”.
10.   What does git add command do?

Intermediate GIT Interview Questions

11.   Why is it considered to be easy to work on Git?
12.   How will you create a git repository?
13.   Tell me something about git stash?
14.   What is the command used to delete a branch?
15.   What differentiates between the commands git remote and git clone?
16.   What does git stash apply command do?
17.   Differentiate between git pull and git fetch.
18.   Can you give differences between “pull request” and “branch”?

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 Git Interview Questions

Intermediate GIT Interview Questions (.....Continued)

19.   Why do we not call git “pull request” as “push request”?

20.   Can you tell the difference between Git and GitHub?
21.   What do the git diff and git status commands do?
22.   What has to be run to squash multiple commits (last N) into a single commit?
23.   How would you recover a branch that has already pushed changes in the central
repository but has been accidentally deleted from every team member’s local
machines?
24.   Can you tell something about git reflog?
25.   What consists of a commit object?
26.   Explain the levels in git config and how can you configure values using them?
27.   What is a detached HEAD and what causes this and how to avoid this?
28.   What does git annotate command do?
29.   What is the difference between git stash apply vs git stash pop command?

Advanced GIT Interview Questions

30.   What command helps us know the list of branches merged to master?
31.   How will you resolve conflict in Git?
32.   What is best advisable step in cases of broken commit: Create an additional
commit OR amend an existing commit?
33.   How to revert a bad commit which is already pushed?
34.   What is the functionality of “git cherry-pick” command?
35.   Explain steps involved in removing a file from git index without removing from
the local file system?
36.   What are the factors involved in considering which command to choose among:
git merge and git rebase?

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 Git Interview Questions

Advanced GIT Interview Questions (.....Continued)

37.   How do you find a commit which broke something a er a merge operation?
38.   What are the functionalities of git reset --mixed and git merge --abort?
39.   Can you tell the differences between git revert and git reset?

Conclusion
40.   Conclusion

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Let's get Started

What is Git and why is it used?

Git is the most popular, open-source, widely used, and an example of distributed
version control system (DVCS) used for handling the development of small and
large projects in a more efficient and neat manner.
It is most suitable when there are multiple people working on projects as a team
and is used for tracking the project changes and efficiently supports the
collaboration of the development process.
With the help of the versioning system, the developer can identify who has made
what changes and then run tests and fix bugs if any and then do necessary
feature implementation. In case of any unforeseen circumstances, the code can
be reverted to any of the previously working versions thereby saving huge
efforts.

Scope of Git:

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 Git Interview Questions

Due to a well-established version control system and the support for

collaborative work, git has garnered wide popularity not just amongst the
so ware developers, but also among the people who do other tasks like
documentation or any other collaborative work. It can seem challenging at first,
but once we get the hang of git, we find that it makes our lives much simpler.
It has an amazing branching system that supports nonlinear development along
with keeping the developers accountable for their code. This helps in making
the development process efficient and faster.

Basic GIT Interview Questions

1.   What is a version control system (VCS)?
A VCS keeps track of the contributions of the developers working as a team on the
projects. They maintain the history of code changes done and with project evolution,
it gives an upper hand to the developers to introduce new code, fixes bugs, and run
tests with confidence that their previously working copy could be restored at any
moment in case things go wrong.

2.   What is a git repository?

A repository is a file structure where git stores all the project-based files. Git can
either stores the files on the local or the remote repository.

3.   What does git clone do?

The command creates a copy (or clone) of an existing git repository. Generally, it is
used to get a copy of the remote repository to the local repository.

4.   What does the command git config do?

The git config command is a convenient way to set configuration options for
defining the behavior of the repository, user information and preferences, git
installation-based configurations, and many such things. 

For example:
To set up your name and email address before using git commands, we can run the
below commands:

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 Git Interview Questions

git config --global

[Link]
“<<your_name>>”
 
git config --global [Link] “<<your_email>>”

5.   Can you explain head in terms of git and also tell the number
of heads that can be present in a repository?
A head is nothing but a reference to the last commit object of a branch.
For every repository, there will always be a default head referred to as “master”
or now “main” (as per GitHub) but there is no restriction to the count of heads
available. In other words, it can have any number of heads.
Usages:

- To go or checkout to 1 commit before the latest commit, we use git checkout

HEAD~1

- To uncommit the last 3 commits without losing the changes, we first run git
reset HEAD~3 . Then we can see the changes made in the last 3 commits and then
update it manually and commit it finally.

- In order to uncommit the last 3 commits and also remove the changes, we can
run the command: git reset --hard HEAD~3 . This command will completely
remove all the changes.

- To look into the changes made in the last 3 commits, we can run git diff
HEAD~3

- To make a new commit by reverting the last 3 commits, we can run the
command: git revert --no-commit HEAD~3...HEAD

6.   What is a conflict?

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 Git Interview Questions

Git usually handles feature merges automatically but sometimes while working
in a team environment, there might be cases of conflicts such as:

1. When two separate branches have changes to the same line in a file
2. A file is deleted in one branch but has been modified in the other.
 
These conflicts have to be solved manually a er discussion with the team as git
will not be able to predict what and whose changes have to be given
precedence.

7.   What is the functionality of git ls-tree?

This command returns a tree object representation of the current repository along
with the mode and the name of each item and the SHA-1 value of the blob.

8.   What does git status command do?

git status command is used for showing the difference between the working
directory and the index which is helpful for understanding git in-depth and also keep
track of the tracked and non-tracked changes.

9.   Define “Index”.

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 Git Interview Questions

Before making commits to the changes done, the developer is given provision to
format and review the files and make innovations to them. All these are done in the
common area which is known as ‘Index’ or ‘Staging Area’.

In the above image, the “staged” status indicates the staging area and provides an
opportunity for the people to evaluate changes before committing them.

10.   What does git add command do?

This command adds files and changes to the index of the existing directory.
 
You can add all changes at once using git add . command.
 
You can add files one by one specifically using git add <file_name> command.
 
You can add contents of a particular folder by using git add /<folder_name>/
command.

Intermediate GIT Interview Questions

11.   Why is it considered to be easy to work on Git?

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 Git Interview Questions

With the help of git, developers have gained many advantages in terms of performing
the development process faster and in a more efficient manner. Some of the main
features of git which has made it easier to work are:
Branching Capabilities:

- Due to its sophisticated branching capabilities, developers can easily work on

multiple branches for the different features of the project.
- It also has an easier merge option along with an efficient work-flow feature
diagram for tracking it.
 
Distributed manner of development:

- Git is a distributed system and due to this nature, it became easier to trace and
locate data if it's lost from the main server.
- In this system, the developer gets a repository file that is present on the server.
Along with this file, a copy of this is also stored in the developer’s system which is
called a local repository.
- Due to this, the scalability of the project gets drastically improved.
 
Pull requests feature:

- This feature helps in easier interaction amongst the developers of a team to

coordinate merge-operations.
- It keeps a proper track of the changes done by developers to the code.
 
Effective release cycle:

- Due to the presence of a wide variety of features, git helps to increase the
speed of the release cycle and helps to improve the project workflow in an
efficient manner.

12.   How will you create a git repository?

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 Git Interview Questions

Have git installed in your system. 

Then in order to create a git repository, create a folder for the project and then
run git init . 
Doing this will create a .git file in the project folder which indicates that the
repository has been created.

13.   Tell me something about git stash?

Git stash can be used in cases where we need to switch in between branches and at
the same time not wanting to lose edits in the current branch. Running the git
stash command basically pushes the current working directory state and index to
the stack for future use and thereby providing a clean working directory for other
tasks.

14.   What is the command used to delete a branch?

To delete a branch we can simply use the command git branch –d [head] .
To delete a branch locally, we can simply run the command: git branch -d
<local_branch_name>
To delete a branch remotely, run the command: git push origin --delete
<remote_branch_name>
Deleting a branching scenario occurs for multiple reasons. One such reason is to
get rid of the feature branches once it has been merged into the development
branch.

15.   What differentiates between the commands git remote and

git clone?
git remote command creates an entry in   git config that specifies a name for a
particular URL. Whereas git clone creates a new git repository by copying an
existing one located at the URL.

16.   What does git stash apply command do?

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 Git Interview Questions

command is used for bringing the works back to the working

git stash apply
directory from the stack where the changes were stashed using git stash
command.
This helps the developers to resume their work where they had last le their
work before switching to other branches.

17.   Differentiate between git pull and git fetch.

git pull  git fetch

This command is also used for

a similar purpose but it follows
a two step process: 
1. Pulls all commits and
This command pulls new changes from desired branch
changes from the currently and stores them in a new
working branch located in branch of the local repository. 
the remote central current
repository. 2. For changes to be reflected
in the current / target branch,
git fetch should be
followed by git merge
command.

git pull = git fetch + git merge

18.   Can you give differences between “pull request” and

“branch”?

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 Git Interview Questions

pull request branch

A branch is
This process is done when there is a
nothing but a
need to put a developer’s change into
separate version
another person’s code branch. 
of the code.

19.   Why do we not call git “pull request” as “push request”?

“Push request” is termed so because it is done when the target repository
requests us to push our changes to it.
“Pull request” is named as such due to the fact that the repo requests the target
repository to grab (or pull) the changes from it.

20.   Can you tell the difference between Git and GitHub?

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 Git Interview Questions

Git GitHub

This is a cloud-
This is a distributed version control system based source
installed on local machines which allow code
developers to keep track of commit repository
histories and supports collaborative work. developed by
using git.

This was
This is maintained by “The Linux
acquired by
Foundation”.
“Microso ”

GitLab,
Atlassian
SVN, Mercurial, etc are the competitors BitBucket, etc
are the
competitors.

GitHub provides a variety of services like forking, user management, etc along
with providing a central repository for collaborative work.

21.   What do the git diff and git status commands do?

git diff git status

This shows the

This shows the difference between the
changes between
working directory and index that is
commits, working
essential in understanding git in depth.
trees, etc.

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 Git Interview Questions

works in a similar fashion to git status with the only difference of

git diff
showing the differences between commits and also between the working
directory and index.

22.   What has to be run to squash multiple commits (last N) into

a single commit?
Squashing multiple commits to a single one overwrites the history which is why it is
recommended to be done using full caution. This step can be done by running the
command: git rebase -i HEAD~{{N}} where {{N}} represents the number of commits
needed to be squashed.

23.   How would you recover a branch that has already pushed

changes in the central repository but has been accidentally
deleted from every team member’s local machines?
We can recover this by checking out the latest commit of this branch in the reflog and
then checking it out as a new branch.

24.   Can you tell something about git reflog?

This command tracks every single change made in the repository references (that can
be branches or tags) and also maintains the branches/tags log history that was either
created locally or checked out. Reference logs such as the commit snapshot of when
the branch was created or cloned, checked-out, renamed, or any commits made on
the branch are maintained by Git and listed by the ‘reflog’ command.
This recovery of the branch is only possible when the branch was either created
locally or checked-out from a remote repository in your local repository for Git
to store its reference history logs.
This command should be executed in the repository that had the lost branch.

25.   What consists of a commit object?

A commit object consists of the following components:

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 Git Interview Questions

A set of files that represents the state of a project at a given point in time.
Reference to parent commit objects.
A 40 character string termed as SHA-1 name uniquely identifies the commit
object.

26.   Explain the levels in git config and how can you configure
values using them?
In order to make git work, it uses a set of configurations that are pre-defined by
default by means of configuration files (or config files). We can change the
default behavior of git by just modifying these files which are basically text files.
In order to do this, it is important to understand how git identifies these files. It
does so by following the below steps:

- Firstly, git searches for the config values in the system-wide gitconfig file stored
in <<installation_path>>/etc/gitconfig file that has settings defined and
applied to every user of the system and all their repos.
     - In case you want git to search from this particular file and read/write on it,
we can pass the option --system to git config command.

- Next, git searches for the ~/.gitconfig file or ~/.config/git/config that has
the scope specific to the user.
   - Git can be made to read/ write from this file specifically bypassing --global
to the git config command.

- Lastly, git searches for the config values in the git directory of the local
repository that we are currently working on.
   - These config values are specific to that particular repository alone and can be
accessed by passing --local to the git config [Link] is the default
config file that gets accessed and modified upon in case we do not specify any
levels.

27.   What is a detached HEAD and what causes this and how to

avoid this?

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 Git Interview Questions

Detached HEAD indicates that the currently checked-out repository is not a local
branch. This can be caused by the following scenarios:
When a branch is a read-only branch and we try to create a commit to that
branch, then the commits can be termed as “free-floating” commits not
connected to any branch. They would be in a detached state.
When we checkout a tag or a specific commit and then we try to perform a new
commit, then again the commits would not be connected to any branch. When
we now try to checkout a branch, these new commits would be automatically
placed at the top.

In order to ensure that detached state doesn't happen, =instead of checking out
commit/tag, we can create a branch emanating from that commit and then we
can switch to that newly created branch by using the command: git checkout -
b <<new_branch_name>> . This ensures that a new branch is checkout out and not a
commit/tag thereby ensuring that a detached state wouldn't happen.

28.   What does git annotate command do?

This command annotates each line within the given file with information from
the commit which introduced that change. This command can also optionally
annotate from a given revision.
Syntax: git annotate [<options>] <file> [<revision>]
You can get to learn more about this command from the official git
documentation here.

29.   What is the difference between git stash apply vs git stash

pop command?
command throws away the specified stash (topmost stash by
git stash pop
default) a er applying it.
git stash apply command leaves the stash in the stash list for future reuse. In
case we wanted to remove it from the list, we can use the git stash drop
command.

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 Git Interview Questions

git stash pop = git stash apply + git stash drop

Advanced GIT Interview Questions

30.   What command helps us know the list of branches merged to
master?
helps to get the list of the branches that have been
git branch --merged
merged into the current branch.
Note: git branch --no-merged lists the branches that have not been merged to
the current branch.

31.   How will you resolve conflict in Git?

Conflicts occur whenever there are multiple people working on the same file
across multiple branches. In such cases, git won't be able to resolve it
automatically as it is not capable of deciding what changes has to get the
precedence.
Following are the steps are done in order to resolve git conflicts:
1. Identify the files that have conflicts.
2. Discuss with members who have worked on the file and ensure that the
required changes are done in the file.
3. Add these files to the staged section by using the git add command.
4. Commit these changes using the git commit command.
5. Finally, push the changes to the branch using the git.

32.   What is best advisable step in cases of broken commit:

Create an additional commit OR amend an existing commit?

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 Git Interview Questions

It is always advisable to create an additional commit rather than amending the

existing commit due to the following reasons:
- Doing the amend operation destroys the previously saved state of that commit.
If only the commit message gets changes or destroyed, it's acceptable but there
might be cases when the contents of the commits get amended. This results in
the loss of important information associated with the commit.
- Over usage of git commit --amend can have severe repercussions as the small
commit amend can continue to grow and gather unrelated changes over time.

33.   How to revert a bad commit which is already pushed?

There can be cases where we want to revert from the pushed changes and go back to
the previous version. To handle this, there are two possible approaches based on the
situations:
Approach 1: Fix the bad changes of the files and create a new commit and push
to the remote repository. This step is the simplest and most recommended
approach to fix bad changes. You can use the command: git commit -m "
<message>"
Approach 2: New commit can be created that reverts changes done in the bad
commit. It can be done using git revert <name of bad commit>

34.   What is the functionality of “git cherry-pick” command?

This command is used to introduce certain commits from one branch onto another
branch within the repository. The most common use case is when we want to
forward- or back-port commits from the maintenance branch to the development
branch.

35.   Explain steps involved in removing a file from git index

without removing from the local file system?

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 Git Interview Questions

Sometimes we end up having certain files that are not needed in the git index
when we are not being careful while using the git add command. Using the
command git rm will remove the file from both the index and the local
working tree which is not always desirable.
 
Instead of using the git rm command we can use the git reset command
for removing the file from the staged version and then adding that file to the
.gitignore file to avoid repeating the same mistake again.

git reset <file_name> # remove file from index

echo filename >> .gitingore # add file to .gitignore to avoid mistake repetition.

36.   What are the factors involved in considering which

command to choose among: git merge and git rebase?
Both these commands ensure that changes from one branch are integrated into
another branch but in very different ways. Git rebasing can be thought of as saying to
use another branch as a new base for the work.

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 Git Interview Questions

Whenever in doubt, it is always preferred to use the git merge command.

Following are some factors that tell when to use merge and rebase commands:
 
In case our branch gets contributions from other developers outside the team as
in open-source or public repositories, then rebase is not preferred.
- This is because rebase destroys the branch and it results in broken and
inconsistent repositories unless the git pull --rebase command is used.
Rebase is a very destructive operation. If not applied correctly, it results in loss of
committed work which might result in breaking the consistency of other
developer’s contribution to the repository.
If the model of having branches per feature is followed, rebasing is not a good
idea there because it keeps track of related commits done by the developers.
But in case the team follows having branches per developer of the team, then
the branch has no additional useful information to be conveyed. In this model,
rebasing has no harm and can be used.
If there is any chance where there might be a necessity to revert a commit to
previous commits, then reverting a rebase would be almost impossible as the
commit data would be destroyed. In such cases, the merge can be used.

37.   How do you find a commit which broke something a er a

merge operation?
This can be a time-consuming process if we are not sure what to look at exactly.
Fortunately, git provides a great search facility that works on the principle of
binary search as git-bisect command.
The initial set up is as follows:

git bisect start # initiates bisecting session

git bisect bad # marks current revision as bad
git bisect good revision # marks last known commit as good revision

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 Git Interview Questions

Upon running the above commands, git checks out a revision that is labeled as
halfway between “good” and “bad” versions. This step can be run again by
marking the commit as “good” or “bad” and the process continues until the
commit which has a bug is found.

38.   What are the functionalities of git reset --mixed and git

merge --abort?
git reset --mixedcommand is used for undoing changes of the working
directory and the git index.
git merge --abort command is used for stopping the merge process and
returning back to the state before the merging occurred.

39.   Can you tell the differences between git revert and git reset?

git revert  git reset

This command is used for

This command is used for
creating a new commit that
undoing the local changes
undoes the changes of the
done in the git repository
previous commit.

Using this command adds a This command operates

new history to the project on the commit history, git
without modifying the existing index, and the working
history directory.

Conclusion
40.   Conclusion

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 Git Interview Questions

In this article, we have seen the introduction and scope of git along with the most
commonly asked git interview questions. The popularity of Git is growing at an
amazing pace and it is predicted that one day all the developers around the world
would be working together as one single entity with the help of git.
Git is a freely available, distributed version control system which helps developers to
collaborate with multiple people on their projects and makes their life easy. With so
much scope and the ever-growing demand, git has evolved into being an inseparable
part of a developer’s life.

GitHandbook: [Link]

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