More Version Control with Git

Typing less

Learning Objectives

  • Create alias

When we start using Git a lot we also get tired of type long commands like git log --all --decorate --graph --oneline. Git allows us to create our own commands, called alias, that will be transcript to full Git commands so we can type less. For example, we can create a command called lga to be transcript into log --all --decorate --graph --oneline using

$ git config --global alias.lga 'log --all --decorate --graph --oneline'

After we create the lga command we can use it as any other Git command, i.e. we just need to run

$ git lga
* 3f3c1bf (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD) Add words
* 22dcdb5 Add words
*   92808ea Add words
|\  
| * 5121eef Add words
* |   ee40506 Add words
|\ \  
| |/  
|/|   
| * 51bd45c Add words
| * ee87332 Add words
* | 87db327 Add words
|/  
* cde9009 Add Python \o/
* 23c6a6b Add words
* 6318870 Begin

And we can pass arguments to lga. For example,

$ git lga -5
* 3f3c1bf (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD) Add words
* 22dcdb5 Add words
*   92808ea Add words
|\  
| * 5121eef Add words
* |   ee40506 Add words
|\ \  
| |/  
|/|

More Alias

Create alias as describe in the following table.

Alias Command
a add
cam commit --all --message
i init
p push --set-upstream

Dotfiles

Now let share our ~/.gitconfig on GitHub. When possible, use the alias created previously.

  1. Create a directory called dotfiles. We can create this directory anywhere in our filesystem but for sake of consistense we are going to use ~/swc-git-intermediate/dotfiles.
  2. Initiate a Git repository on dotfiles.
  3. Create README.md.
  4. Create a commit with README.md.
  5. Copy ~/.gitconfig into dotfiles.
  6. Create a commit with dotfiles.

  7. Push the changes to GitHub.

    We need to create a repository on GitHub for it.

Now we can go to https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=dotfiles and look at the dotfiles that some people share on GitHub.

License