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Drinking The Git Kool Aid - Glass 3 - Aliases

So hopefully you’ve been using command line git for a few days.

Typing ‘git status’ and ‘git difftool’ over and over is a royal pain huh?

Turns out there is an easy solution!

Git aliases…

Open up your .gitconfig file we talked about in our last post and add the following:

:::ini
[alias]
    st = status
    ci = commit
    co = checkout
    dt = difftool

Now simply type ‘git st’ (it is 4 less characters!)

Another command you’ll frequently use is ‘git log’ to see who changed what, etc.

While the default is useful there are lots of ways you can format it:

:::ini
[alias]
lg = log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative
ls = log --pretty=format:"%C(yellow)%h%Cred%d\\ %Creset%s%Cgreen\\ (%cr)[%cn]" --decorate
ll = log --pretty=format:"%C(yellow)%h%Cred%d\\ %Creset%s%Cgreen\\ [%cn]" --decorate --numstat
lm = log --pretty=format:"%C(yellow)%h%Cred%d\\ %Creset%s%Cgreen\\ (%cr)[%cn]" --decorate --author jpriest
standup = log --pretty=format:"%C(yellow)%h%Cred%d\\ %Creset%s%Cgreen\\ [%cn]" --decorate --since yesterday --author jpriest

Note: Change my username to yours in the examples above.

Try these out and then hit the Google for more useful aliases. There are a ton out there you can copy and as you become more familiar with the available Git commands you can also add more of your own.