I was looking through some old material and I found some git tips I presented at the the Haverhill Hackers Meetup during one of the “lighting talks” meetups. I originally put them in a gist, but feel it would be helpful to others to post here. Enjoy!

Alias git and common commands

  • at a minimum, alias g="git", it’s a tool you use all the time save those keystrokes!
  • go further, alias common commands: ga="git add", gst="git status", gc="git commit", etc
  • if you use zsh, the oh-my-zshconfiguration framework has tons of aliases for git(and other
  • things) if you don’t want to take a whole framework, you can checkout the aliases it sets here https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/wiki/Cheatsheet#git

Use git stash or WIP commit messages when changing branches

  • git stash is a quick way to just put some changes to the side when you need to change the focus of your work
  • if you’re already on your own branch, nothing is stoping you from creating a commit with these changes and noting its WIP
  • if you go with the WIP commit message remember to reset or amend that commit so your commmit message can mean something

Setup your .gitconfig to use a personal email address(even at work)

  • https://help.github.com/articles/setting-your-email-in-git/ (applies to bitbucket as well)
  • Why?
  • open source commits will no longer show up for your (GitHub/BitBucket/etc) account if you don’t have access to that email
  • if you leave that job, future developers have a path to contact you if the need arise
  • if that bothers you, at least set it globally to your personal email and then change the local config per project to be your work email

Use a global .gitignore

  • put common OS related files that get generated in here
  • put common language/framework/tool related files that get generated
  • do this in addition to local a ignore file because you have the added protection of not commiting garbage that other developers may have missed if they setup the ignore file

Try out git plugins for your IDE or text editor of choice

  • most should have a plugin for git commands or at a minimum to show that a line has changed in the git history
  • I use vim + vim-fugitive -
  • https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive
  • I mostly use it for git diff and git blame with quick shortcuts to access them

Bonus

  • store your .gitconfig and .gitignore in source control(hopefully with your other dotfiles)
  • check out git rebase if you like that style of working with commit history
  • create custom commands by adding them to your git config like this nifty command to remove a branch locally and remotely: nuke-branch = !sh -c 'git branch -D $1 && git push origin :$1' -