Run A Git Command From Outside The Repo

Generally you run a git command from somewhere within the parent folder where the .git directory lives. Git recognizes the .git directory in that parent directory and runs your command against it.

You can run a command against a given git repository without being within the parent directory. This can be handy for scripting as well as for one-off commands when you don't want to cd to the directory. To do this, you need to tell Git where to find the .git directory. You do this with the -C flag.

For instance, from anywhere on my machine, I can view a log of this TIL repository with the following:

$ git -C ~/code/til log

Notice that the -C flag and its argument are positioned directly after git. The command (log) should be positioned after that.

See man git for more details.

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