So You Think You Know Git

Highlights of git shortcuts by Scott Chacon (YouTube)/More Available in Videos: Part 1, Part 2

Table of contents

• Git Config Tips
  • Conditional
• Useful Commands
  • Common Commands
  • New Commands
    • Show Branches in Columns
    • Safe Version of Force Push
    • Restore
    • Commits with SSH Key Signatures
    • Git Prefetching
    • Visualizing the Commit Tree
• Default Global Configurations

Git Config Tips

.gitconfig

[user]
  email = [email protected]

or add it with a command: git config --global user.email [email protected].

Conditional

# The config can be loaded based on working path
[IncludeIf "gitdir:~/projects/work/"]
    path = ~/projects/work/.gitconfig

Useful Commands

Common Commands

Command	Description
git blame -L :example:path/to/file	Shows commit author for line number of :example:
git blame -w	Ignore changes to spacing in the file
git log -w	Ignore changes to spaces in the logs
git log -p -S --debug	Reduces the list to commits with message --debug
git diff --word-diff	Shows word count instead of lines changed

New Commands

Show Branches in Columns

# Saves the setting
git config --global column.ui auto              #1
git config --global branch.sort -committerdate  
git branch 

OR

# Optional way
git branch --column --sort=-committerdate       #2

Safe Version of Force Push

# This stops any changes overwriting the upstream repository
git push --force-with-lease

Restore

# Start with a clean copy by `restoring` it or the usual `checkout`
git restore file.txt
git checkout file.txt

OR

# Restore from x time ago
git restore --source HEAD@{2.hours.ago} file.txt

It's very useful to jump to when the project was working with this command.

Commits with SSH Key Signatures

# create a new key with ssh-keygen
git config gpg.format ssh
git config user.signingkey ~/.ssh/

Remember to add the public key to your upstream account.

Git Prefetching

git maintenance start

OR

# .gitconfig
[maintenance]
    auto = false
    strategy = incremental

A cron job will be created to prefetch per hour by default.

The prefetched references will not be loaded into the project until the changes are merged with git fetch.

# To get more info on what prefetching does in the background
git for-each-ref | grep prefetch

Default configurations

strategy	incremental
prefetch	hourly
commit-graph	hourly

Visualizing the Commit Tree

git log --graph --oneline -10 >/dev/null

It is a very expensive feature because objects have to traverse through each commit to draw the tree. Prefetching will cache the tree in a hash map and load it when there's a call to draw the graph.

git config --global fetch.writeCommitGraph true

Useful Default Global Configurations

# Reuse Recorded Resolution
# Git will remember how to resolve similar merge conflicts
git config --global rerere.enabled true

# Repository creates a new branch by default on push
git config --global push.default current

# Add an alias to stash all changes
git config --global alias.staash 'stash --all'

# Run a command as a git alias
git config --global alias.[alias] ![command]

# .gitconfig
[alias]
    staash = 'stash --all'
[rerere]
    enabled = true
[push]
    default = current