Useful git stuff

Setup

Configure some stuff before you can get started:

# which name do you want to see in your commits?
git config --global user.name "Martin Scharm"

# which email do you want to use
git config --global user.email martin@dev

# tell git which gpg key to use by default
git config --global user.signingkey E81BC3078D2DD9BD

# always push all branches and all tags
git config --global --add remote.origin.push '+refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*'
git config --global --add remote.origin.push '+refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*'

Aliases

Global aliases are stored in ~/.gitconfig. I’m using the following aliases:

# beautify the log: list actions of last 14 days in a tree like view
git config --global alias.lg "log --all --pretty=format:'%x09%C(bold blue)%an%Creset%x09%Cred%h%Creset %Cgreen%ad%Creset%x09%s%d' --graph --date=short  --since='14 days ago'"

# search for a particular thing in the history
git config --global alias.search "log --all --pretty=format:'%x09%C(bold blue)%an%Creset%x09%Cred%h%Creset %Cgreen%ad%Creset%x09%s%d' --graph --date=short -m -i -G"

# shortcut for the status
git config --global alias.s "status -s"

# shortcut for commiting
git config --global alias.c "commit -a"

# shortcut for checkout
git config --global alias.co "checkout"

# shortcut for checkout
git config --global alias.co "checkout"

# shortcut for pulling and pushing
git config --global alias.d "pull origin --all --tags"
git config --global alias.u "push origin --all --tags"

# diff two commits using meld
git config --global alias.meld "difftool -d -t meld"

# show ignored files
git config --global alias.i "clean -ndX"

Jump around the git tree

• HEAD always points to you current position in the tree.
• You can always checkout old commits or branches using git checkout XXX, with XXX being a commit hash or a branch name
• Branch names are pointers to commits. If you’ve checked out a branch and do a commit the branch pointer will move on to your new commit.
• You can address commits relatively using ^ (go one up in tree) and ~X (go X up in tree), eg.
  • git checkout master~2 Makefile checkout the file Makefile from the second last commit before master
  • git checkout master^^ get the third last commit on branch master

Move a branch

If you want the branch mybranch to point to target you just need to call the following command:

git branch -f mybranch target

You forced mybranch to point to target. target may be a commit hash or a branch name (any ref git can resolve into a commit).

Track down a bug using cherry-pick

Let’s assume you have a history such as

master: init -> c1 -> ... -> c6

and you discovered a bug in commit c6, you would probably intruduce a lot of echos/prinlns/etc to detect the bug. Afterwars you need to get rid of all these debugging things and commit just the fix.

But it’s ways easier using cherry-pick. Just create a bugfix branch. Do all your debugging stuff in there, find the bug and do another commit (commits db1 to db3). Finally, fix the bug and commit it with db4:

master: init -> c1 -> ... -> c6
                              \
                               \
bugfix*:                       db1 -> db2 -> db3 -> db4
                                ^add echo/println    ^bug fixed

You can then simply checkout the master and use cherry-pick to append the commit db4 to it, which fixes the bug in the master branch without all the debugging stuff. Git’s cherry-pick will apply commits from anywhere in the tree onto HEAD (as long as that commit isn’t an ancestor of HEAD). Here are the git commands:

git checkout master
git cherry-pick db4

And your final graph would look like:

master*: init -> c1 -> ... -> c6 ------------------------> db4'
                               \                        /
                                \                      /
bugfix:                         db1 -> db2 -> db3 -> db4
                                 ^add echo/println    ^bug fixed

Of course, your commit hashes are a bit more complex than c6 and db4, but I hope you got the idea :)

Modifying an old commit

Let’s assume you have a history such as

master: c4 -> c5 -> c6

and you forgot to do something in c5. Then you can reorder the last two commits using git rebase -i HEAD^^ --aboveAll to receive the following:

master: c4 -> c6 -> c5

now change the last commit using git commit --amend and you’ll end up with:

master: c4 -> c6 -> c5'
               \
                \
                 c5

Finally, just reorder the last two commits using git rebase -i HEAD^^ --aboveAll:

master: c4 -> c5' -> c6

You can achieve the same with less reordering using git’s cherry-pick. Just checkout the commit c to modify and modify it to c' (using --amend). Afterwards, you can cherry-pick all commits that came after c.

Further Resources

• Learn about branching/merging/rebasing/detaching/etc in an interactive tutorial from pcottle.
• Learn about undoing things in git, including redoing a commit, resetting a git add and unmodifying a file.