I was once a Git googler (I mean I google Git a lot :P) until one day I sit down and decide to spend a bit of time remembering the most common commands. My approach was to develop an easy-to-understand framework and use systematic aliases to replace Git commands. If that sounds interesting, I present you the Git ABC.
Git ABC
There are three stages a file change (for example adding a new line) need to go through in Git. I use A, B and C to represent them.
Stage A
Unstaged changes and untracked files are in stage A. git status
will show them in red.
Stage B
Once we git add -A
, changes will be moved to stage B. git status
will show them in green.
In Git lingo, these changes are now 'staged'.
Stage C
After we git commit -m
, changes will be moved to stage C (committed stage).
Alias
Now comes the fun part.
Move forward
Git users should already be familiar with git add
and git commit
so I choose the following aliases to move changes forward
-
alias ga='git add -A'
(Git Add) move changes from stage A to B -
alias gc='git commit -m'
(Git Commit) move changes from stage B to C
Move backward
I use go
to undo changes. We can think of it as 'go away' :)
-
alias go='git checkout'
undo changes from A -
alias gou='git clean -id'
(GO Untracked) remove un-tracked files from A -
alias gob='git reset HEAD'
(GO from B) move changes from B to A -
alias goc='git reset --soft HEAD~1'
(GO from C) move changes from C to B -
alias gocc='git reset --hard HEAD~1'
(GO from C Confirm) remove the whole commit from C
Check differences between stages
I use gd
(Git Diff) to check the difference.
-
alias gd='git diff'
Difference between A and B -
alias gdbc='git diff --cached'
Difference between B and C -
alias gdac='git diff HEAD'
Difference between A and C -
alias gdc='git diff HEAD^ HEAD'
All changes from the last Commit
Here I listed all the aliases bellow so that you can copy and paste into your shell config files.
# move forward
alias ga='git add -A'
alias gc='git commit -m'
# move backward / undo
alias go='git checkout'
alias gou='git clean -id' # u means Untracked files
alias gob='git reset HEAD'
alias goc='git reset --soft HEAD~1'
alias gocc='git reset --hard HEAD~1' # c means Confirm
# check difference
alias gd='git diff'
alias gdbc='git diff --cached'
alias gdac='git diff HEAD'
alias gdc='git diff HEAD^ HEAD'
Bonus aliases
Some of my fun aliases do not fit into the framework above so I lump them here :)
# status
alias gs='git status'
# log
alias gl='git log'
alias glo='git log --oneline --decorate'
# stash and apply
alias gst='git stash'
alias gap='git stash apply --index'
# rebase
alias gr='git rebase'
alias grm='git fetch origin master:master && git rebase master'
alias grs='git rebase --skip'
alias grc='git rebase --continue'
alias gri='git rebase -i master'
Go above and beyond
At last, I encourage you to go crazy and create your own aliases for profit and fun :)
Top comments (1)
Helpful post.
I for one have been trying to learn Git recently (which is no easy feat) and I never knew you could assign aliases like that! Definitely something I'll make a note of and add to my arsenal.