Learning the git workflow takes a bit of brain retraining, but since I’ve been using SVN almost entirely via commandline (because Subversive sucks and locks up my Eclipse when I try to use it for anything beyond synching/updating/committing a handful of files), adopting git’s commandline syntax is reasonably similar. Consider these simple operations:

Initial checkout from existing repo for a given branch	git clone http://github.com/sonatype/sonatype-tycho.git; cd sonatype-tycho; git checkout origin/tycho-0.10.x	svn checkout http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbosstools/branches/jbosstools-3.2.0.Beta1/
Update locally checked out files from central repo	git pull	svn update
List locally changes files/folders	git status	svn stat
Diff locally changed file	git diff somefile.txt	svn diff somefile.txt
Revert locally changed file*	git checkout somefile.txt	svn revert somefile.txt
Revert ALL local changes (except untracked files)*	git reset –hard HEAD	svn revert . -R
Add new file	git add file.txt	svn add file.txt
Add new folder recursively	git add folder	svn add folder
Delete file	git rm file.txt	svn rm file.txt
Delete folder	git rm -r folder (non-recursive by default; use -r to recurse)	svn rm folder (recursive by default; use -N to not recurse)
Commit changed file to central repo	git commit -m “message” file.txt; git push	svn ci -m “message” file.txt
Ignore files/folders (in the current folder)	echo “target *.class bin” > .gitignore; \ git ci -m “gitignore” .gitignore	svn propset svn:ignore “target *.class bin” .; \ svn ci -N -m “svn:ignore” .

Obviously you can do a lot more w/ Git than with SVN (like stashing local changes temporarily), but for the sake of simply moving from a VCS to a DVCS and being able to continue to work the same way you already do, the above table should provide a good introduction.

Reference: Git vs. SVN – Basic Commandline Syntax Reference from our JCG partner Nick Boldt at the DivByZero blog.