As of late, I’ve been more mindful to identify areas in my workflow that I can make more efficient. If you find yourself doing repetitive tasks or tasks that take a long time, you should consider if there are ways to automate those tasks or make them take less time to complete.
One wasteful area I identified recently is the git commands I use. I found myself typing commands like git status, git checkout or git checkout -b a lot. It might not seem like much, but those keystrokes add up over time, especially if lots of other developers are doing the same thing. I was aware of git aliases, so I created a few (and borrowed others from coworkers) to make myself more efficient.
Git aliases
Aliases allow you to assign a particular git command, or series of commands, to a single command that you give a name to. Here are the aliases I use:
Checking your status
The git status command lets you know where you are in the context of git.
Some colleagues of mine have turned me onto using the alias git st.
Doing a checkout
The git checkout command does a few things, which I’m not a big fan of, since it’s not intuitive to folks who are new to git. You can check out an existing branch, go to a particular commit, or revert changes that are not staged for commit.
I use the alias git cout to save some characters.
Creating a new branch
When you supply the -b flag to the git checkout command, it creates a new branch and switches you to it (e.g. git checkout -b my-new-feature). This is the 4th thing I know that git checkout does.
I use the alias git coutb to shorten this command (e.g. git coutb my-new-feature).
Amending a commit
Sometimes after making a commit, I find that there’s a file I meant to commit, but didn’t do so because I forgot to stage it. I stage the file and amend the commit with git commit --amend.
I created an alias called git amend that does a slight modification of the git commit --amend command: git commit -a --amend. This will stage all unstaged files and amend them to the latest commit.
Deleting a branch
The command to delete a branch in git is NOT straightforward at all. It is git branch -D (e.g. git branch -D branch-to-delete). I have to think about this sometimes and don’t always remember it.
I created a straightforward alias for this command: git delete (e.g. git delete branch-to-delete).
Fetching and pulling the current branch
I frequently pull my workplace’s develop branch. I also like to have any new remote branches that have been pushed so I have an idea of that’s going on. I used to do this in two seprate commands: git fetch and git pull.
I created an alias, git fpull, which does both the fetch and the pull. It aliases the two commands being passed to the command line: !git fetch && git pull.
Adding these aliases for your own use
You can run the following commands to add these aliases to your global git config:
git config --global alias.st 'status'
git config --global alias.cout 'checkout'
git config --global alias.coutb 'checkout -b'
git config --global alias.amend 'commit -a --amend'
git config --global alias.delete 'branch -D'
git config --global alias.fpull '!git fetch && git pull'
Alternatively, you can go to a git repo I created and run a bash script that will add these aliases for you. The repo can be found on my GitHub.
Conclusion
I hope you find these git aliases helpful in making you more productive. If you have any git aliases you’d like to share, feel free to leave a comment.