NB: For simplicity, most recipes assume that the remote is called origin and the branch is master. Adapt as needed.
Problem: I accidentally committed before pulling in latest changes. For example, local master is on commit A, remote master is on commit B, I commit C locally on top of A, but it should be on top of B.
Solution: git pull --rebase origin master (via SO)
Problem: I forked e.g. pharo-vcs/iceberg, and now I want to get the latest commits.
Solution: See explanation in GitHub help
Problem: I was trying to fix a hairy bug, and in desperation, I made a few "hail mary" commits which didn't work out and I feel that they will be noise if pushed. Now that I have the fix, I'd like to combine them all into one commit and discard the rest.
Solution: This is called "squashing" in git parlance. There are a few ways to do this, but here's a simple example. Let's say you want to work with the last 4 commits. git rebase -i HEAD~4. You will then have an interactive editor where you can pick which ones to pick/squash/remove (more info
Problem: I was playing around on the command line and messed up my local clone. I want to wipe the changes clean to match the remote
Solution: git reset --hard origin/master (via SO)
Problem: I merged an MCZ of which I was not the author, and would like to preserve proper authorship in git.
Solution: git commit --amend --author="John Doe <john@doe.org>" (via Tower)