> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.oxen.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # 🏗️ Local Development > Oxen provides numerous tools to work with and version your data from the command line. ## Create a repository You can initialize an Oxen repository locally with `oxen init` ```bash theme={null} oxen init ``` This will create a `.oxen` folder in your working directory, which contains the metadata for the repository. It's also where each commit's [Merkle Tree](https://ghost.oxen.ai/merkle-tree-101/) will be stored new files are added and committed. ## Add files Add files to a repository with `oxen add`. This copies the files' contents to the repository's `version store` and stages the changes to the `staged_db`. You can add files and directories (added recursively) using either absolute paths or their relative paths to the repo root. ```bash theme={null} oxen add path/to/file.txt ``` ```bash theme={null} oxen add images/ ``` You can also add with glob paths or wildcards. This will add all files matching the glob pattern that aren't ignored in `.oxenignore` ```bash theme={null} oxen add images/f* # Adds all paths starting with an 'f' in the images dir ``` ```bash theme={null} oxen add . # Adds the current directory ``` This can be used to stage new, modified, or removed files and directories to the repo. You can view staged changes with `oxen status` ```bash theme={null} oxen status ``` Output: ``` On branch main -> 113b00a451ac07d284b29ce5604d6891 Files to be committed: (use "oxen restore --staged ..." to unstage) modified: modified_file.txt new file: new_file.txt removed: removed_file.txt ``` Oxen allows you to stage and version many different data types in the same repository, accessing them the same at the level of the CLI. That means you don't have to worry about what kind of data you're working with when you're using `oxen` commands. Under the hood, oxen stores different [File Metadata](/concepts/file_metadata) for different types for additional functionality ## Commit Changes To commit the changes that are staged with a message you can use ```bash theme={null} oxen commit -m "Some informative commit message" ``` This creates a new commit on the current branch. If the repository was previosuly empty, this also creates the `main` branch Once you've committed a file, a copy of its contents will be stored in the repository's `version store`. By default, the version files will be located in `.oxen/versions/files`. File and directory metadata are stored in the [Merkle Tree](https://ghost.oxen.ai/merkle-tree-101/), which mimics the structure of the working directory ## View History You can see the history of changes on your current branch by running: ```bash theme={null} oxen log ``` Output: ``` commit 6b958e268656b0c5 Author: Ox Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2022 16:08:39 -0700 adding 10,000 training images commit e76dd52a4fc13a6f Author: Ox Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2022 16:05:22 -0700 Initialized Repo 🐂 ``` ## List Branches To view the branch you're on, use `oxen branch`. This will list all of the repo's branches, highlighting the current one. ```bash theme={null} oxen branch ``` You can also view the branches that exist on a repo's remotes with `oxen branch --remote` ```bash theme={null} oxen branch --remote ``` To delete a branch, use `oxen branch --delete`. This will fail if the branch is not safe to delete (i.e., it has changes that aren't merged to main) ```bash theme={null} oxen branch --delete feature ``` ```bash theme={null} oxen branch -D feature # use -D to force delete a branch ``` ## View Status To see what data is tracked, staged, modified, removed, or not yet added to the repository you can use `oxen status` Note: since we are dealing with large datasets with many files, `status` rolls up the changes and summarizes them for you. ```bash theme={null} oxen status ``` Output: ``` On branch main -> e76dd52a4fc13a6f Directories to be committed added: images with added 8108 files Files to be committed: new file: images/000000000042.jpg new file: images/000000000074.jpg new file: images/000000000109.jpg new file: images/000000000307.jpg new file: images/000000000309.jpg new file: images/000000000394.jpg new file: images/000000000400.jpg new file: images/000000000443.jpg new file: images/000000000490.jpg new file: images/000000000575.jpg ... and 8098 others Untracked Directories (use "oxen add ..." to update what will be committed) annotations/ (3 items) ``` You can paginate through the changes with the `-s` (skip) and `-l` (limit) params on the status command. Run `oxen status --help` for more info. ## Restore Files If you want to revert changes you've made to a file in the working directory, you can use `oxen restore` to restore the file to its version in the HEAD commit. This works with deleted or modified files ```bash theme={null} oxen restore path/to/file.txt ``` You can also use `oxen restore` on directories to recursively restore their files If you want to restore to a specific version in your commit history, you can supply the commit id or branch name with the `--source` flag. ```bash theme={null} oxen restore path/to/file.txt --source COMMIT_ID ``` As with git, you can also restore files from the `staged_db` using `oxen restore --staged` ```bash theme={null} oxen restore --staged path/to/dir ``` ## Removing Data To stage a file to be removed from the next commit, use the `oxen rm` command. ```bash theme={null} oxen rm path/to/file.txt ``` Note: the file must be committed in the history for this to work. If you want to remove a file that has not been committed yet, simple use your /bin/rm command. To recursively remove a directory use the `-r` flag. ```bash theme={null} oxen rm -r path/to/dir ``` You can also remove entries from the `staged_db` using `oxen rm --staged` ```bash theme={null} oxen rm --staged -r path/to/dir ``` ## Checkout Revision You can create a new branch with `oxen checkout --branch` ```bash theme={null} oxen checkout -b feature ``` Once you have multiple branches, you can use `oxen checkout` to safely move between them. This will restore the working directory to head commit of the branch you're checking out ```bash theme={null} oxen checkout main ``` You can also checkout a commit ID ```bash theme={null} oxen checkout COMMIT_ID ``` ## View Diffs Oxen can compute and display the diff between files using the [oxen diff](/concepts/diffs) command ```bash theme={null} oxen diff dataset.csv ``` This will compare the file `dataset.csv` in the working directory with its version in the HEAD commit. You can also compare different files, compare files across revisions, and compare different revisions with each other ## Merge Commits You can create a merge commit with `oxen merge`. This will merge the current branch into the target, or fail if there are merge conflicts ```bash theme={null} oxen merge TARGET_BRANCH ``` If you're collaborating with on a repo, you may instead want to create a merge request. You can do this through the UI on [Oxen.ai](https://oxen.ai) Oxen.ai merge request ## Prune Commits If you've accidentally committed sensitive data or have a bloated commit history with many orphaned files, you can use [oxen prune](/commands/prune) to cleanup the repository. ```bash theme={null} oxen prune ```