Overview

The git command-line tool supports various subcommands such as git clone, git checkout, and so forth. The sparo command-line is intended to be a complete replacement for git.

Sparo has four kinds of subcommands:

1. Mirrored subcommands such as sparo branch and sparo revert directly invoke the corresponding git version of that subcommand. The motivation for using mirrored subcommands is to enable Sparo to provide advice about parameters that may cause performance issues. Additionally, you can optionally configure Sparo to collect anonymized usage metrics to help you measure the experience in your repository. (Collected data is sent to your own service. It is not accessible by any other party.)

2. Enhanced subcommands follow the same basic design as their git counterparts, but with adaptations for sparse checkout profiles and more efficient defaults. There are four enhanced commands:

   • sparo checkout
   • sparo clone
   • sparo fetch
   • sparo pull (not implemented yet; currently mirrors git pull)

3. Renamed subcommands are the mirrored versions of the four enhanced subcommands. They are renamed to add a git- prefix:

• sparo git-checkout
• sparo git-clone
• sparo git-fetch
• sparo git-pull (not implemented yet)

4. Auxiliary subcommands are new subcommands that provide Sparo-specific functionality. They are:

• sparo auto-config
• sparo init-profile
• sparo list-profiles
• sparo inspect (not implemented yet, will report working directory status and diagnostics)
• sparo reclone (not implemented yet, will efficiently revert to a clean clone)

Mirrored commands

Each subcommand has its own page in this documentation, except for the mirrored commands which are already covered by the Git documentation. For convenience, the most essential "porcelain" subcommands are listed in the table below, however every Git subcommand is supported.

Subcommand	Summary
git add	Add file contents to the index
git am	Apply a series of patches from a mailbox
git archive	Create an archive of files from a named tree
git bisect	Use binary search to find the commit that introduced a bug
git branch	List, create, or delete branches
git bundle	Move objects and refs by archive
git checkout	Switch branches or restore working tree files
git cherry-pick	Apply the changes introduced by some existing commits
git citool	Graphical alternative to git-commit
git clean	Remove untracked files from the working tree
git clone	Clone a repository into a new directory
git commit	Record changes to the repository
git describe	Give an object a human readable name based on an available ref
git diff	Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc
git fetch	Download objects and refs from another repository
git format-patch	Prepare patches for e-mail submission
git gc	Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository
git gitk	The Git repository browser
git grep	Print lines matching a pattern
git gui	A portable graphical interface to Git
git init	Create an empty Git repository or reinitialize an existing one
git log	Show commit logs
git maintenance	Run tasks to optimize Git repository data
git merge	Join two or more development histories together
git mv	Move or rename a file, a directory, or a symlink
git notes	Add or inspect object notes
git pull	Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch
git push	Update remote refs along with associated objects
git range-diff	Compare two commit ranges (e.g. two versions of a branch)
git rebase	Reapply commits on top of another base tip
git reset	Reset current HEAD to the specified state
git restore	Restore working tree files
git revert	Revert some existing commits
git rm	Remove files from the working tree and from the index
git shortlog	Summarize 'git log' output
git show	Show various types of objects
git sparse-checkout	Reduce your working tree to a subset of tracked files
git stash	Stash the changes in a dirty working directory away
git status	Show the working tree status
git submodule	Initialize, update or inspect submodules
git switch	Switch branches
git tag	Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed with GPG
git worktree	Manage multiple working trees
. . .	...and many other subcommands including any custom commands found in the shell PATH