Git for the very lazy ones like me.

This post is proof that I’m lazy at heart to the core!

I came across git over year ago. It’s a quite hard tool to learn, but once you get it, Its bloody awesome. It will change the way you code, forever. If its not, learn it well, again.

Here I am sharing a few ways in which I am making git “awesomer”, or say better for lazy guys like me, saving some typing.

<disclaimer> I don’t give a damn about windows users. I don’t care if things I share don’t work for them. I hate M$, people using M$ products ( includes skype also ) and everything that is vaguely or remotely related to them. Things I blog here works on my primary machine powered by Debian Sid and that’s all I know. </disclaimer>

1. Save some typing with awesome aliases.

Its a long list of aliases, so its quite sensible to hack bash and add a new alias file. Add the following code to your .bashrc. I’m not sure of other platforms, sorry. I think its same for tcsh, dash, ksh etc

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
	. ~/.bash_aliases
fi

Now all this to ~/.bash_aliases

# git aliases

alias gs='git status '
alias ga='git add '
alias gb='git branch '
alias gc='git commit'
alias gd='git diff'
alias go='git checkout '
alias gl='git log '
alias gk='gitk --all&'
alias gg='gitg --all'
alias got='git '
alias get='git '
alias gits='git status '

It saves you from typos like ‘get’ and ‘got’. git status being the most common command is aliased to gs and gits

My favorite is alias go='git checkout '. When you want to go to ‘master’, you say go master or go issue53. I think it makes a lot more sense than git checkout master or git co master.

Often you might prefer git aliases powered by git itself. Add this to your ~/.gitconfig or set it manually with commands git config --global alias.s status

[alias]
	s = status
	c = commit
	co = checkout
	see = log --pretty=format:\"%h %s\" --graph

Not enough, there is a special one. This one saves a lot of typing for less frequently typed commands or often ones like g commit

alias g='git '

Add it to the previous list.

Here comes the problem. We are quite used to bash auto completion. Transformations like git com<tab> => git commit comes quite handy. It just wont work with g com<tab>. Hack bash again!!!

Add this to your ~/.bashrc

complete -o default -o nospace -F _git g

Aha, one more problem solved !!

Next trick is quite common and actually much cooler, because you don’t have to type at all. You can edit the environment variable PS1 in bash to change your primary prompt. We can add the current state of the git repository to the prompt. That means a lot less git status because you can just get the info from your prompt.

Here are 3 images.

Default prompt

Prompt in a clean git working directory

Prompt in a dirty git working directory

The current branch is shown as [master] if pwd is a git tracked directory, else its just ignored. the * means the working tree is dirty, Ie, there is something that you haven’t stashed/commited yet.

Add this to your ~/.bashrc for the new prompt.

function parse_git_dirty {
  [[ $(git status 2> /dev/null | tail -n1) != "nothing to commit (working directory clean)" ]] && echo "*"
}
function parse_git_branch {
  git branch --no-color 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e "s/* \(.*\)/[\1$(parse_git_dirty)]/"
}

export PS1='\[\033[1;33m\]\w\[\033[0m\] [\T \d] $(parse_git_branch) \n -> '

I have always wondered why people put their name or the hostname in their prompt, unless they are ‘always ssh’ dudes, which most of us are not, the hostname is a quite useless thing wasting space. Also its multi-line, means you have more space to type commands. As a bonus it shows the present working directory and time also :)

I am in the middle of building something awesome with git hooks. This post will soon be updated with more stuff :)

Thanks to @jasim_ab for inspiring me to write this one :)

Jaseem Abid

Other Posts

Git for the very lazy ones like me.

1. Save some typing with awesome aliases.

Default prompt

Prompt in a clean git working directory

Prompt in a dirty git working directory