Advanced Git Workflows: Essential Tools and Concepts for Version Control Every Developer Should Know

Version control is a critical skill for any developer, and Git is the most popular tool in the field. However, many developers only scratch the surface of Git's capabilities. Mastering Git’s essential tools and concepts helps you write cleaner commit histories, debug easily, and collaborate better with your team.

This blog dives into some of the most powerful Git tools and practices that every developer should know.

1. git diff — Inspect Changes Before Committing

One of the most important habits when working with Git is reviewing what you’ve changed before committing. git diff helps you do exactly that.

It shows differences between your working directory and the staging area.
It helps you catch unnecessary changes, debugging prints, or typos.

For changes already staged for commit, run:

We can see the parts or chunks of changes at the moment in the relevant file; run

2. git add -p — Stage Changes Selectively

Sometimes, you fix multiple things in a file but want to commit them separately. Instead of adding the whole file, use the interactive staging feature:

We get down to the patch level using p. At the patch level, we wish to determine what should and shouldn't be included.

If there are multiple parts of the changes in the file and we want to add only a specific part of the change into the staging area in the current commit, we can use this command.

This breaks your changes into hunks and lets you:

y — stage the hunk
n — skip the hunk
s — split the hunk into smaller parts
e — manually edit the hunk

3. Writing Meaningful Commits with Subject and Body

Good commit messages tell a story, explaining why a change was made.
There are several ways to add a commit with both subject and body.

Multiple lines of text can be passed as standard input into a command using a shell feature called a Here Document (or heredoc).

EOF is a maker. We can replace it with any word like END, MSG etc. (But need to stay with consistency)

What happens here

Git commit waits for input
Everything between >>EOF and the ending EOF is sent as the commit message
The first line becomes the commit subject.
The blank line separates the subject from the body.
The rest is the detailed body of the commit.

Makes history easier to understand
Helps teammates (and future you!) during debugging

4. git reset — Undo Mistakes and Revert Changes

Sometimes, you stage or commit something by mistake. git reset is your rescue tool — but use it wisely.

If you ever reset too far or accidentally lose commits, you can use git reflog command to recover lost commits. We will discuss about it in the later in this blog