Besides the "basic" commands of Git, everyone has their own little Git tricks they use. I wanted to quickly write a list of my own which I tend to alias in my .gitconfig. Scroll to the bottom to see some fun git related commands that run outside of git! :)
Quick amend
I often forget to commit a file, or leave a console.log in. I absolutely hate doing commits like removed console.log. So instead, I add the file as if I was going to make a commit and run:
git commit --amend --reuse-message HEAD
Which will add the file to the last commit and reuse the old commit message. I alias this one as git amend for quickfixes
NOTE Based on feedback below, it's also possible to do git commit --amend --no-edit for the same effect.
Rebase on top of origin/master
Older branches often fall behind pretty far, so far that I have to get up to speed to eliminate build errors, ci errors, or just resolve conflicts. My favorite is to do the following:
git fetch origin # fetch latest origin
git rebase origin/master
This way, I'm stacking my current branch commits on top of the latest version of master!
Last commit
Sometimes, the git log gets overwhelming. Due to my frequent use of the aforementioned amend command, i tend to want to view just the last commit in my git log:
git log -1
checkout older version of a file (like a lock file!)
Occasionally, I screw up a file unrelated to my branch. Mostly, that happens with lock files (mix.lock, package-lock.json, etc.). Rather than reverting a commit which probably contained a bunch of other stuff, I just "reset" the file back to an older version
git checkout hash-goes-here mix.lock
And then I can commit the fix!
cherry-pick
An underrated command that I occasionally use. When a branch gets stale, it's sometimes easier to just get the stuff you really need from it rather than try to get the entire branch up to speed. A good example, for me, have been branches that involve UI/backend code that is no longer necessary. In that case, I might want to cherry pick only certain commits from the branch
git cherry-pick hash-goes-here
This will magically bring that commit over to the branch you're on. You can also do a list!
git cherry-pick first-hash second-hash third-hash
You can also do a range
git cherry-pick first-hash..last-hash
The reflog
This is such a power-user feature that I rarely use it. I mean, once a year! But it's good to know about it. Sometimes, I lose commits. I delete a branch or reset or amend a commit I didn't mean to mess up.
In those situations, it's good to know reflog exists. It's not a log of individual commits for the branch you're on, it's a log of all of your commits -- even ones that were on dead branches. However, the log gets emptied from time to time (pruned) so that only relevant information stays.
git reflog
The command returns a log and what's useful is cherry-picking or rebasing on top of a commit. Very powerful when you pipe into grep.
Bash command aliases
Aside from git commands, I like to also use some fun bash aliases to help my workflow
Current branch
To get the name of the current branch, I have this alias:
alias git-branch="git branch | sed -n -e 's/^\* \(.*\)/\1/p'"
When I run git-branch or run $(git-branch) in another command, I'll get the name of the current branch I'm on.
NOTE Based on feedback in the comments, I switched this over to git symbolic-ref --short HEAD which works just as well but you can actually read it.
Track upstream branch
While I'm sure this is doable in the .gitconfig, I've yet to figure out how. When I run the first push on a new branch, I always get asked to setup the branch for upstream tracking. Here's my alias for that:
alias git-up="git branch | sed -n -e 's/^\* \(.*\)/\1/p' | xargs git push -u origin "
Now when I run git-up, I push my current branch and setup upstream tracking!
Feedback
Based on some of the very helpful feedback in the comments, I made some adjustments to what I'm using.
Current branch
It looks like there are a bunch of new ways to get the current branch name. If you scroll up, you'll see that I've used a crazy sed parsing command to get the branch name.
Here's my new alternative:
alias git-branch="git symbolic-ref --short HEAD"
And it seems to work exactly as you'd expect!
Top comments (47)
Assuming that you have set your
git-branchalias already, you could simplify this as:alias git-up="git push -u origin \$(git-branch)"EDIT: escaped $ to prevent running the alias on definition, thanks @darlanalves
Git assumes the current branch implicitely, so the following also works:
Even better is to use a git alias for this:
so you can use it like
$ git up.If you think you need to explicitly specify the branch anyway you can define an alias like this:
Nice! Thank you for the tips!
The
git upalias is perfect.Not specifying the branch still gives me a
Fatal: The current branch has no upstream. Any ideas why?Did you specify the
-uflag?Yep, I copied and pasted this exactly
git config --global alias.up 'push -u origin'yeah, looks like I have the same issue!
Ok, after some digging I got an alias to work. I have no idea why it works when nothing else I tried would but here it is anyway. I think it is best to paste the following into your .git-config file directly:
or if you have git 2.22
I figured this out mostly by messing around with this Stack Overflow answer: stackoverflow.com/a/30529511/9770212
the problem is that the
git-branchgot evaluated when I started my terminal. This is inzsh. :/I'd immediately get "not a git repository" message.
maybe a function would work?
Oh, you're right... an alias would be immediately evaluated.
Using a function is the way to go.
it kind of tripped me up! I was expecting it to evaluate when invoked, just like a function.
Yeah, it may not be intuitive at first... but is really useful to be able to rely on both behaviors (evaluate on definition or when run).
If you wanted to use other aliases within an alias you have to start playing around with
eval(which I don't really recommend). Like:alias testingEval="eval 'git-branch'"But things get messy pretty quickly... I pretty much use alias for super simple things or functions when I need something a bit longer that could use some extra variables, or to use parameters, or runtime expansion.
btw, I use zsh too :) ... I use prezto and got some configs online if you want to take a look
github.com/ivanalejandro0/prezto/b...
I get why it works like that and I'm ok with it :) It really just surprised me but then again, I don't do a lot of bash scripting.
The key to it is just escape the
$char in an alias.alias git-up="git push -u origin \$(git-branch)"Oh, cool. I didn't know about that, thanks.
I've edited my comment escaping the $.
I like this kind of articles, we can get some ideas.
From your examples, I had the feeling that you're not sure how to include arguments or bash commands into aliases. You might be interested in one my articles:
How do you prepare your commits?
Sandor Dargo ・ Jul 3 ・ 5 min read
I do know. And the comments taught me a good deal but I don't like adding bash commands to git aliases since I use git on non Linux machines
Sorry then. How come you use
sedandxargsin your aliases? Or you want to maintain only one.gitconfigand push all the rest to OS-specific setenvs?That's it!
I write completely different aliases for Powershell but I get to still use identical git aliases
Have you considered using Git BASH on windows?
yep, quickly dismissed it. It's not worth it plus Powershell is just so damned good!
Nice post!
For the "get the name of the current branch" there's a git plumbing command that can help you get the current branch name reliably without the text manipulation:
I tend to keep this one as part of my git aliases:
Here's a quick write-up if you're interested!
My approach to get the current branch is this:
alias gcb='git symbolic-ref --short HEAD'(gcb to remind me of Git Current Branch)
I like it more because it uses only git and I don't depend on piping through another app.
I am afraid to do
git cherry-pickwithout the-nparameter because cherry-picking automatically commits after picking the changes. Most of the time I want to review the changes and commit them manually. So I do:ooh, i wasn't aware of the dry run. I tend to not care because I can always do an interactive rebase and delete those commits.
My approach for this is
git commit --amend --no-editI like that better. 👍
On the current branch alias, don't forget
git branch --show-currentwith Git 2.22: stackoverflow.com/a/55088865/6309.I used it in stackoverflow.com/a/56713414/6309
also if you've got git > 2 this works
git status --porcelain=v2 --untracked-file=no --branch \
| grep branch.head \
| cut -d ' ' -f 3
I HAD NO IDEA. This is awesome! Thank you! :)
looks like I'm still a little behind on versions. I'm on v2.17.x
Neat tip though, I'll have to remember to come back and change my rc files to use this :)
Why use shell aliases for something that's
gitspecific? You can just usegitaliases.Instead of:
Do:
Now, from within any repo, you can run
git this-branch, and you didn't have to add anything to your shell, and if you switch shells, it will continue to work.That's pretty cool! I basically just learned about that from people on this post
Git aliases
System aliases
Thank you for the nice writeup Antonin! I'll definitively take over a few :)
Might not be totally related, but in order to not be able to commit things that are not to be committed, we're using (husky)[github.com/typicode/husky] and a pretty strict linting :)
We actually use husky too!!