Git Interview Questions and Answer Part – 10

Where can HEAD point?

• To a branch
• To a branch or nowhere
• To a branch or a commit (Ans)
• To a branch, a commit, a tree, or a blob

How does “git rebase” move an existing commit?

• It copies over the commit to a new commit with a different parent and SHA1. (Ans)
• None of these
• It just changes the parent in the commit file.
• It changes the commit’s parent and its SHA1.

What’s one difference between merges and rebases?

• Rebases change history, merges don’t. (Ans)
• None of these
• Rebases create commits with multiple parents, merges don’t.
• Merges create a new commit object, rebases don’t

What’s a “pull”?

• A “merge” followed by a “push”
• A “push” followed by a “merge”
• A “fetch” followed by a “push”
• A “fetch” followed by a “merge” (Ans)

Which of these is not a Git command?

• git fetch
• git fork (Ans)
• git push
• git clone

The setting, core.autocrlf, configures:

• automatic addition of line breaks to commit messages.
• autocorrection of spelling errors in commit messages.
• conversion of line endings between the repository and working copy. (Ans)
• stripping extra line breaks from the end of files.

Which command creates a local git repository?

• git localrepo
• git init (Ans)
• git repo
• git initrepo

Performing a git pull is equivalent to a git fetch followed by:

• git merge (Ans)
• git rebase
• git cherry-pick
• git reset –hard

Cherry-picking a commit will:

• apply only that commit to the current branch. (Ans)
• remove the commit from its source branch and apply it to the current branch.
• apply that commit and all subsequent commit to the current branch.
• apply that commit and all previous commits to the current branch.

The advantage of a DVCs is:

• full local history
• easy backups
• all of these (Ans)
• reliable branching/merging
• different topologies

To remove and discard the changes from the last commit on your current branch, you should use:

• git reset –soft HEAD
• git revert HEAD
• git revert HEAD~1
• git reset –hard HEAD
• git reset –hard HEAD~1 (Ans)

Which URL style should you use if you want to avoid using passwords?

• http://github.com/username/repository.git
• git@github.com:username/repository.git (Ans)
• git://github.com/username/repository.git
• https://github.com/username/repository.git

Given an unmerged feature branch, feature1, what is the effect of running “git branch -d feature1”?

• Deletion of feature1 will fail silently
• feature1 will not be deleted and an error message will be displayed (Ans)
• Git will display the prompt “Unmerged changes. Confirm delete? (y/N)”
• feature1 will be deleted

User-level configuration in Git can be modified using:

• git config –system
• git config
• git config –user
• git config –global (Ans)

Which file lists the files and directories that should not be committed to the repository?

• .git/config
• .gitnocommit
• .gitattributes
• .gitignore (Ans)

What feature in Git allows you to become more efficient at the command line?

• Speech recognition
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Snippets
• Aliases (Ans)

When is a commit A said to be reachable from another commit B?

• When B is an ancestor of A
• When A is the direct parent of B
• When A and B are patch equivalent
• When A is an ancestor of B (Ans)

How can Git calculate patches on the fly?

• It’s really good at math.
• It uses the patience algorithm.
• It stores the entire files in the working directory for each commit. (Ans)
• It stores deltas between files in the working directory.

What is the difference between the -S and -G options of git log?

• -S searches for matching lines that are removed, while -G searches for lines that are added.
• -S searches for matching lines that are either added, removed, or modified, while -G only includes lines that are modified.
• -S searches for matching lines that are either added or removed, while -G also includes lines that are modifie- (Ans)
• -S searches for matching lines that are either added or removed, while -G also includes lines that are modified.

In which scenario is git rerere useful?

• When dealing with complex merge conflicts
• When merging more than two branches
• When dealing with a lot of different merge conflicts
• When dealing with the same merge conflict more than once (Ans)

Rajesh Kumar

I’m Rajesh Kumar, a DevOps, SRE, DevSecOps, Cloud, and Platform Engineering expert passionate about sharing practical knowledge, real-world experiences, and industry best practices. I have worked at Cotocus and regularly write about technology, travel, investing, health, product reviews, and digital marketing through my various platforms.

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