Helpful bash aliases for git

I have this in my .bashrc

alias g='git status'
alias gap='git add -p'
alias gc='git commit'
alias gcf='git commit --fixup'
alias gri='git rebase -i'
alias gca='git commit --amend --no-edit'

This makes me so much faster in the shell when using git. Let’s go through them one by one.

g

Whenever I enter a repo, I run g to see if I’m in a clean workspace. I try to do this before exiting too, so I don’t leave garbage around for the next time I come around. I hate entering a dirty workspace, because I usually have no rememberance of what I was doing. And without changes being comitted, the changes does not have a message (or a context).

$ g
On branch main

No commits yet

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
  index.html

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

gap

This helps keeping my commits clean. Before I use it, I might do a git diff to get a quick overview over all the changes. But even if I want to commit all of it, I usually use gap, out of habit, to make sure I see all the changes I am comitting.

This is the equivalent of git add --patch which lets you stage smaller “hunks” of the diff interactively.

If I want to pick out unstaged hunks from a single file:

$ gap
diff --git a/index.html b/index.html
index 323fae0..e17c29d 100644
--- a/index.html
+++ b/index.html
@@ -1 +1,5 @@
+<h1>a new header</h1>
+
 foobar
+
+<footer>a new footer</footer>
(1/1) Stage this hunk [y,n,q,a,d,s,e,?]? s
Split into 2 hunks.
@@ -1 +1,3 @@
+<h1>a new header</h1>
+
 foobar
(1/2) Stage this hunk [y,n,q,a,d,j,J,g,/,e,?]?

gc

As simple as git commit. It just helps me write less. If I just write gc an interactive window pops up where I can write a longer commit message. If I’m just going to write a single line, I append the message argument:

$ gc -m 'add header and footer'
[main e1bf653] add header and footer
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)

gcf

This is when I want to make some changes to a previous commit, or merge two commits into one, without updating the commit message of the destination commit. If the destination commit is the previous one, I would rather use gca, but if it’s further back in the log, I will use gcf.

First I have to find the sha of the destination commit I want to fixup. I use git log for this, or even git commit --oneline for a more compact output.

$ gcf 13c018d
[main 74a7a19] fixup! first
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

The git log now has a new commit with a fixup instruction. This can be processed by git rebase --interactive --autosquash, which re-orders the fixup-commits automatically.

gri

This is my favorite git function nowadays. I’m a perfectionist who likes to have as clean commit history as possible before pushing to the remotes and submitting PRs.

This is almost always preceded by a gcf command, as I run this after I’ve fixed up a previous commit. However, I need an extra argument to tell git how far back in the history I want to go. One way to do this is to count how many commits back the target of the fixup was using git log, then running

$ gcf @~7

But it is cumbersome to have to count every time. A much neater alternative is to reference the parent of a sha. I already know the sha, as it’s the same argument as used in the gcf command, and git has an operator ~ we can use to specify the parent.

$ gcf 13c018d
$ gri 13c018d~

Now I get an interactive window which I can often just close immediately to get the commits fixed up (merged).

I have rebase.autosquash enabled by default in my global git config, so this alias doesn’t need the --autosquash argument.

gca

When I’m just editing the previous commit, I can amend the commit with git commit --amend. I usually don’t want to update the commit message, so I can just run gca and be done with it.

$ gca
[main 3aee9cd] add header and footer
 Date: Fri Dec 31 12:08:40 2021 +0100
 3 files changed, 4 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 bar
 create mode 100644 foo

And if I wanted to update the message here, I can run gca --edit.