gitglossary(7) Git Manual gitglossary(7)
NAME
gitglossary - A Git Glossary
SYNOPSIS
*
DESCRIPTION
alternate object database
Via the alternates mechanism, a repository can inherit part of its
object database from another object database, which is called an
"alternate".
bare repository
A bare repository is normally an appropriately named directory with a
.git suffix that does not have a locally checked-out copy of any of
the files under revision control. That is, all of the Git
administrative and control files that would normally be present in
the hidden .git sub-directory are directly present in the
repository.git directory instead, and no other files are present and
checked out. Usually publishers of public repositories make bare
repositories available.
blob object
Untyped object, e.g. the contents of a file.
branch
A "branch" is a line of development. The most recent commit on a
branch is referred to as the tip of that branch. The tip of the
branch is referenced by a branch head, which moves forward as
additional development is done on the branch. A single Git repository
can track an arbitrary number of branches, but your working tree is
associated with just one of them (the "current" or "checked out"
branch), and HEAD points to that branch.
cache
Obsolete for: index.
chain
A list of objects, where each object in the list contains a reference
to its successor (for example, the successor of a commit could be one
of its parents).
changeset
BitKeeper/cvsps speak for "commit". Since Git does not store changes,
but states, it really does not make sense to use the term
"changesets" with Git.
checkout
The action of updating all or part of the working tree with a tree
object or blob from the object database, and updating the index and
HEAD if the whole working tree has been pointed at a new branch.
cherry-picking
In SCM jargon, "cherry pick" means to choose a subset of changes out
of a series of changes (typically commits) and record them as a new
series of changes on top of a different codebase. In Git, this is
performed by the "git cherry-pick" command to extract the change
introduced by an existing commit and to record it based on the tip of
the current branch as a new commit.
clean
A working tree is clean, if it corresponds to the revision referenced
by the current head. Also see "dirty".
commit
As a noun: A single point in the Git history; the entire history of a
project is represented as a set of interrelated commits. The word
"commit" is often used by Git in the same places other revision
control systems use the words "revision" or "version". Also used as a
short hand for commit object.
As a verb: The action of storing a new snapshot of the project's
state in the Git history, by creating a new commit representing the
current state of the index and advancing HEAD to point at the new
commit.
commit graph concept, representations and usage
A synonym for the DAG structure formed by the commits in the object
database, referenced by branch tips, using their chain of linked
commits. This structure is the definitive commit graph. The graph can
be represented in other ways, e.g. the "commit-graph" file.
commit-graph file
The "commit-graph" (normally hyphenated) file is a supplemental
representation of the commit graph which accelerates commit graph
walks. The "commit-graph" file is stored either in the
.git/objects/info directory or in the info directory of an alternate
object database.
commit object
An object which contains the information about a particular revision,
such as parents, committer, author, date and the tree object which
corresponds to the top directory of the stored revision.
commit-ish (also committish)
A commit object or an object that can be recursively dereferenced to
a commit object. The following are all commit-ishes: a commit object,
a tag object that points to a commit object, a tag object that points
to a tag object that points to a commit object, etc.
core Git
Fundamental data structures and utilities of Git. Exposes only
limited source code management tools.
DAG
Directed acyclic graph. The commit objects form a directed acyclic
graph, because they have parents (directed), and the graph of commit
objects is acyclic (there is no chain which begins and ends with the
same object).
dangling object
An unreachable object which is not reachable even from other
unreachable objects; a dangling object has no references to it from
any reference or object in the repository.
dereference
Referring to a symbolic ref: the action of accessing the reference
pointed at by a symbolic ref. Recursive dereferencing involves
repeating the aforementioned process on the resulting ref until a
non-symbolic reference is found.
Referring to a tag object: the action of accessing the object a tag
points at. Tags are recursively dereferenced by repeating the
operation on the result object until the result has either a
specified object type (where applicable) or any non-"tag" object
type. A synonym for "recursive dereference" in the context of tags is
"peel".
Referring to a commit object: the action of accessing the commit's
tree object. Commits cannot be dereferenced recursively.
Unless otherwise specified, "dereferencing" as it used in the context
of Git commands or protocols is implicitly recursive.
detached HEAD
Normally the HEAD stores the name of a branch, and commands that
operate on the history HEAD represents operate on the history leading
to the tip of the branch the HEAD points at. However, Git also allows
you to check out an arbitrary commit that isn't necessarily the tip
of any particular branch. The HEAD in such a state is called
"detached".
Note that commands that operate on the history of the current branch
(e.g. git commit to build a new history on top of it) still work
while the HEAD is detached. They update the HEAD to point at the tip
of the updated history without affecting any branch. Commands that
update or inquire information about the current branch (e.g. git
branch --set-upstream-to that sets what remote-tracking branch the
current branch integrates with) obviously do not work, as there is no
(real) current branch to ask about in this state.
directory
The list you get with "ls" :-)
dirty
A working tree is said to be "dirty" if it contains modifications
which have not been committed to the current branch.
evil merge
An evil merge is a merge that introduces changes that do not appear
in any parent.
fast-forward
A fast-forward is a special type of merge where you have a revision
and you are "merging" another branch's changes that happen to be a
descendant of what you have. In such a case, you do not make a new
merge commit but instead just update your branch to point at the same
revision as the branch you are merging. This will happen frequently
on a remote-tracking branch of a remote repository.
fetch
Fetching a branch means to get the branch's head ref from a remote
repository, to find out which objects are missing from the local
object database, and to get them, too. See also git-fetch(1).
file system
Linus Torvalds originally designed Git to be a user space file
system, i.e. the infrastructure to hold files and directories. That
ensured the efficiency and speed of Git.
Git archive
Synonym for repository (for arch people).
gitfile
A plain file .git at the root of a working tree that points at the
directory that is the real repository. For proper use see git-
worktree(1) or git-submodule(1). For syntax see gitrepository-
layout(5).
grafts
Grafts enable two otherwise different lines of development to be
joined together by recording fake ancestry information for commits.
This way you can make Git pretend the set of parents a commit has is
different from what was recorded when the commit was created.
Configured via the .git/info/grafts file.
Note that the grafts mechanism is outdated and can lead to problems
transferring objects between repositories; see git-replace(1) for a
more flexible and robust system to do the same thing.
hash
In Git's context, synonym for object name.
head
A named reference to the commit at the tip of a branch. Heads are
stored in a file in $GIT_DIR/refs/heads/ directory, except when using
packed refs. (See git-pack-refs(1).)
HEAD
The current branch. In more detail: Your working tree is normally
derived from the state of the tree referred to by HEAD. HEAD is a
reference to one of the heads in your repository, except when using a
detached HEAD, in which case it directly references an arbitrary
commit.
head ref
A synonym for head.
hook
During the normal execution of several Git commands, call-outs are
made to optional scripts that allow a developer to add functionality
or checking. Typically, the hooks allow for a command to be
pre-verified and potentially aborted, and allow for a
post-notification after the operation is done. The hook scripts are
found in the $GIT_DIR/hooks/ directory, and are enabled by simply
removing the .sample suffix from the filename. In earlier versions of
Git you had to make them executable.
index
A collection of files with stat information, whose contents are
stored as objects. The index is a stored version of your working
tree. Truth be told, it can also contain a second, and even a third
version of a working tree, which are used when merging. See "THE
INDEX" in gitdatamodel(7) for details.
index entry
The information regarding a particular file, stored in the index. An
index entry can be unmerged, if a merge was started, but not yet
finished (i.e. if the index contains multiple versions of that file).
master
The default development branch. Whenever you create a Git repository,
a branch named "master" is created, and becomes the active branch. In
most cases, this contains the local development, though that is
purely by convention and is not required.
merge
As a verb: To bring the contents of another branch (possibly from an
external repository) into the current branch. In the case where the
merged-in branch is from a different repository, this is done by
first fetching the remote branch and then merging the result into the
current branch. This combination of fetch and merge operations is
called a pull. Merging is performed by an automatic process that
identifies changes made since the branches diverged, and then applies
all those changes together. In cases where changes conflict, manual
intervention may be required to complete the merge.
As a noun: unless it is a fast-forward, a successful merge results in
the creation of a new commit representing the result of the merge,
and having as parents the tips of the merged branches. This commit is
referred to as a "merge commit", or sometimes just a "merge".
object
The unit of storage in Git. It is uniquely identified by the SHA-1 of
its contents. Consequently, an object cannot be changed. See
"OBJECTS" in gitdatamodel(7) for details.
object database
Stores a set of "objects", and an individual object is identified by
its object name. The objects usually live in $GIT_DIR/objects/.
object identifier, object ID, oid
Synonyms for object name.
object name
The unique identifier of an object. The object name is usually
represented by a 40 character hexadecimal string. Also colloquially
called SHA-1.
object type
One of the identifiers "commit", "tree", "tag" or "blob" describing
the type of an object.
octopus
To merge more than two branches.
orphan
The act of getting on a branch that does not exist yet (i.e., an
unborn branch). After such an operation, the commit first created
becomes a commit without a parent, starting a new history.
origin
The default upstream repository. Most projects have at least one
upstream project which they track. By default origin is used for that
purpose. New upstream updates will be fetched into remote-tracking
branches named origin/name-of-upstream-branch, which you can see
using git branch -r.
overlay
Only update and add files to the working directory, but don't delete
them, similar to how cp -R would update the contents in the
destination directory. This is the default mode in a checkout when
checking out files from the index or a tree-ish. In contrast,
no-overlay mode also deletes tracked files not present in the source,
similar to rsync --delete.
pack
A set of objects which have been compressed into one file (to save
space or to transmit them efficiently).
pack index
The list of identifiers, and other information, of the objects in a
pack, to assist in efficiently accessing the contents of a pack.
pathspec
Pattern used to limit paths in Git commands.
Pathspecs are used on the command line of "git ls-files", "git
ls-tree", "git add", "git grep", "git diff", "git checkout", and many
other commands to limit the scope of operations to some subset of the
tree or working tree. See the documentation of each command for
whether paths are relative to the current directory or toplevel. The
pathspec syntax is as follows:
o any path matches itself
o the pathspec up to the last slash represents a directory prefix.
The scope of that pathspec is limited to that subtree.
o the rest of the pathspec is a pattern for the remainder of the
pathname. Paths relative to the directory prefix will be matched
against that pattern using fnmatch(3); in particular, * and ? can
match directory separators.
For example, Documentation/*.jpg will match all .jpg files in the
Documentation subtree, including
Documentation/chapter_1/figure_1.jpg.
A pathspec that begins with a colon : has special meaning. In the
short form, the leading colon : is followed by zero or more "magic
signature" letters (which optionally is terminated by another colon
:), and the remainder is the pattern to match against the path. The
"magic signature" consists of ASCII symbols that are neither
alphanumeric, glob, regex special characters nor colon. The optional
colon that terminates the "magic signature" can be omitted if the
pattern begins with a character that does not belong to "magic
signature" symbol set and is not a colon.
In the long form, the leading colon : is followed by an open
parenthesis (, a comma-separated list of zero or more "magic words",
and a close parentheses ), and the remainder is the pattern to match
against the path.
A pathspec with only a colon means "there is no pathspec". This form
should not be combined with other pathspec.
top
The magic word top (magic signature: /) makes the pattern match
from the root of the working tree, even when you are running the
command from inside a subdirectory.
literal
Wildcards in the pattern such as * or ? are treated as literal
characters.
icase
Case insensitive match.
glob
Git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable for consumption
by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag: wildcards in the
pattern will not match a / in the pathname. For example,
"Documentation/*.html" matches "Documentation/git.html" but not
"Documentation/ppc/ppc.html" or
"tools/perf/Documentation/perf.html".
Two consecutive asterisks ("**") in patterns matched against full
pathname may have special meaning:
o A leading "**" followed by a slash means match in all
directories. For example, "**/foo" matches file or directory
"foo" anywhere. "**/foo/bar" matches file or directory "bar"
anywhere that is directly under directory "foo".
o A trailing "/**" matches everything inside. For example,
"abc/**" matches all files inside directory "abc", relative
to the location of the .gitignore file, with infinite depth.
o A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slash
matches zero or more directories. For example, "a/**/b"
matches "a/b", "a/x/b", "a/x/y/b" and so on.
o Other consecutive asterisks are considered invalid.
Glob magic is incompatible with literal magic.
attr
After attr: comes a space separated list of "attribute
requirements", all of which must be met in order for the path to
be considered a match; this is in addition to the usual non-magic
pathspec pattern matching. See gitattributes(5).
Each of the attribute requirements for the path takes one of
these forms:
o "ATTR" requires that the attribute ATTR be set.
o "-ATTR" requires that the attribute ATTR be unset.
o "ATTR=VALUE" requires that the attribute ATTR be set to the
string VALUE.
o "!ATTR" requires that the attribute ATTR be unspecified.
Note that when matching against a tree object, attributes are
still obtained from working tree, not from the given tree object.
exclude
After a path matches any non-exclude pathspec, it will be run
through all exclude pathspecs (magic signature: ! or its synonym
^). If it matches, the path is ignored. When there is no
non-exclude pathspec, the exclusion is applied to the result set
as if invoked without any pathspec.
parent
A commit object contains a (possibly empty) list of the logical
predecessor(s) in the line of development, i.e. its parents.
peel
The action of recursively dereferencing a tag object.
pickaxe
The term pickaxe refers to an option to the diffcore routines that
help select changes that add or delete a given text string. With the
--pickaxe-all option, it can be used to view the full changeset that
introduced or removed, say, a particular line of text. See git-
diff(1).
plumbing
Cute name for core Git.
porcelain
Cute name for programs and program suites depending on core Git,
presenting a high level access to core Git. Porcelains expose more of
a SCM interface than the plumbing.
per-worktree ref
Refs that are per-worktree, rather than global. This is presently
only HEAD and any refs that start with refs/bisect/, but might later
include other unusual refs.
pseudoref
A ref that has different semantics than normal refs. These refs can
be read via normal Git commands, but cannot be written to by commands
like git-update-ref(1).
The following pseudorefs are known to Git:
o FETCH_HEAD is written by git-fetch(1) or git-pull(1). It may
refer to multiple object IDs. Each object ID is annotated with
metadata indicating where it was fetched from and its fetch
status.
o MERGE_HEAD is written by git-merge(1) when resolving merge
conflicts. It contains all commit IDs which are being merged.
pull
Pulling a branch means to fetch it and merge it. See also git-
pull(1).
push
Pushing a branch means to get the branch's head ref from a remote
repository, find out if it is an ancestor to the branch's local head
ref, and in that case, putting all objects, which are reachable from
the local head ref, and which are missing from the remote repository,
into the remote object database, and updating the remote head ref. If
the remote head is not an ancestor to the local head, the push fails.
reachable
All of the ancestors of a given commit are said to be "reachable"
from that commit. More generally, one object is reachable from
another if we can reach the one from the other by a chain that
follows tags to whatever they tag, commits to their parents or trees,
and trees to the trees or blobs that they contain.
reachability bitmaps
Reachability bitmaps store information about the reachability of a
selected set of commits in a packfile, or a multi-pack index (MIDX),
to speed up object search. The bitmaps are stored in a ".bitmap"
file. A repository may have at most one bitmap file in use. The
bitmap file may belong to either one pack, or the repository's
multi-pack index (if it exists).
rebase
To reapply a series of changes from a branch to a different base, and
reset the head of that branch to the result.
ref
A name that points to an object name or another ref (the latter is
called a symbolic ref). For convenience, a ref can sometimes be
abbreviated when used as an argument to a Git command; see
gitrevisions(7) for details. Refs are stored in the repository.
The ref namespace is hierarchical. Ref names must either start with
refs/ or be located in the root of the hierarchy. For the latter,
their name must follow these rules:
o The name consists of only upper-case characters or underscores.
o The name ends with "_HEAD" or is equal to "HEAD".
There are some irregular refs in the root of the hierarchy that do
not match these rules. The following list is exhaustive and shall not
be extended in the future:
o AUTO_MERGE
o BISECT_EXPECTED_REV
o NOTES_MERGE_PARTIAL
o NOTES_MERGE_REF
o MERGE_AUTOSTASH
Different subhierarchies are used for different purposes. For
example, the refs/heads/ hierarchy is used to represent local
branches whereas the refs/tags/ hierarchy is used to represent local
tags..
See also "REFERENCES" in gitdatamodel(7).
reflog
A reflog shows the local "history" of a ref. In other words, it can
tell you what the 3rd last revision in this repository was, and what
was the current state in this repository, yesterday 9:14pm.
See "REFLOGS" in gitdatamodel(7) for a short explanation of the
format. See git-reflog(1) for details.
refspec
A "refspec" is used by fetch and push to describe the mapping between
remote ref and local ref. See git-fetch(1) or git-push(1) for
details.
remote repository
A repository which is used to track the same project but resides
somewhere else. To communicate with remotes, see fetch or push.
remote-tracking branch
A ref that is used to follow changes from another repository. It
typically looks like refs/remotes/foo/bar (indicating that it tracks
a branch named bar in a remote named foo), and matches the
right-hand-side of a configured fetch refspec. A remote-tracking
branch should not contain direct modifications or have local commits
made to it.
repository
A collection of refs together with an object database containing all
objects which are reachable from the refs, possibly accompanied by
meta data from one or more porcelains. A repository can share an
object database with other repositories via alternates mechanism.
resolve
The action of fixing up manually what a failed automatic merge left
behind.
revision
Synonym for commit (the noun).
rewind
To throw away part of the development, i.e. to assign the head to an
earlier revision.
SCM
Source code management (tool).
SHA-1
"Secure Hash Algorithm 1"; a cryptographic hash function. In the
context of Git used as a synonym for object name.
shallow clone
Mostly a synonym to shallow repository but the phrase makes it more
explicit that it was created by running git clone --depth=...
command.
shallow repository
A shallow repository has an incomplete history some of whose commits
have parents cauterized away (in other words, Git is told to pretend
that these commits do not have the parents, even though they are
recorded in the commit object). This is sometimes useful when you are
interested only in the recent history of a project even though the
real history recorded in the upstream is much larger. A shallow
repository is created by giving the --depth option to git-clone(1),
and its history can be later deepened with git-fetch(1).
stash entry
An object used to temporarily store the contents of a dirty working
directory and the index for future reuse.
submodule
A repository that holds the history of a separate project inside
another repository (the latter of which is called superproject).
superproject
A repository that references repositories of other projects in its
working tree as submodules. The superproject knows about the names of
(but does not hold copies of) commit objects of the contained
submodules.
symref
Symbolic reference: instead of containing the SHA-1 id itself, it is
of the format ref: refs/some/thing and when referenced, it
recursively dereferences to this reference. HEAD is a prime example
of a symref. Symbolic references are manipulated with the git-
symbolic-ref(1) command.
tag
A ref under refs/tags/ namespace that points to an object of an
arbitrary type (typically a tag points to either a tag or a commit
object). In contrast to a head, a tag is not updated by the commit
command. A Git tag has nothing to do with a Lisp tag (which would be
called an object type in Git's context). A tag is most typically used
to mark a particular point in the commit ancestry chain.
tag object
An object containing a ref pointing to another object, which can
contain a message just like a commit object. It can also contain a
(PGP) signature, in which case it is called a "signed tag object".
topic branch
A regular Git branch that is used by a developer to identify a
conceptual line of development. Since branches are very easy and
inexpensive, it is often desirable to have several small branches
that each contain very well defined concepts or small incremental yet
related changes.
trailer
Key-value metadata. Trailers are optionally found at the end of a
commit message. Might be called "footers" or "tags" in other
communities. See git-interpret-trailers(1).
tree
Either a working tree, or a tree object together with the dependent
blob and tree objects (i.e. a stored representation of a working
tree).
tree object
An object containing a list of file names and modes along with refs
to the associated blob and/or tree objects. A tree is equivalent to a
directory.
tree-ish (also treeish)
A tree object or an object that can be recursively dereferenced to a
tree object. Dereferencing a commit object yields the tree object
corresponding to the revision's top directory. The following are all
tree-ishes: a commit-ish, a tree object, a tag object that points to
a tree object, a tag object that points to a tag object that points
to a tree object, etc.
unborn
The HEAD can point at a branch that does not yet exist and that does
not have any commit on it yet, and such a branch is called an unborn
branch. The most typical way users encounter an unborn branch is by
creating a repository anew without cloning from elsewhere. The HEAD
would point at the main (or master, depending on your configuration)
branch that is yet to be born. Also some operations can get you on an
unborn branch with their orphan option.
unmerged index
An index which contains unmerged index entries.
unreachable object
An object which is not reachable from a branch, tag, or any other
reference.
upstream branch
The default branch that is merged into the branch in question (or the
branch in question is rebased onto). It is configured via
branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge. If the upstream branch
of A is origin/B sometimes we say "A is tracking origin/B".
working tree
The tree of actual checked out files. The working tree normally
contains the contents of the HEAD commit's tree, plus any local
changes that you have made but not yet committed.
worktree
A repository can have zero (i.e. bare repository) or one or more
worktrees attached to it. One "worktree" consists of a "working tree"
and repository metadata, most of which are shared among other
worktrees of a single repository, and some of which are maintained
separately per worktree (e.g. the index, HEAD and pseudorefs like
MERGE_HEAD, per-worktree refs and per-worktree configuration file).
SEE ALSO
gitdatamodel(7), gittutorial(7), gittutorial-2(7), gitcvs-migration(7),
giteveryday(7), The Git User's Manual[1]
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
NOTES
1. The Git User's Manual
git-htmldocs/user-manual.html
Git 2.56.0 2026-09-27 gitglossary(7)
git 2.56.0 - Generated Thu Oct 1 18:55:15 CDT 2026